Some Things You Can Change, And Some You Cannot
by library.of.trifles
Summary: She was rich, sheltered and extravagantly loved. He was the mad, storytelling son of the town drunk. It was baffling that they should be drawn to each other, impossible that they should remain apart. The tale of Bard and his wife, canon-compliant.
1. Chapter 1

She knew about him long before he knew about her. Everyone knew about him.

Bard, the shag-headed lad without so much as a surname, was known to all the children of Laketown just as his father, the drunkard Rancid Borin, was known to their parents. It was a fact in the town that no matter how poor or lonely or unloved a lad might be, no lad could be poorer or lonelier or less loved than Bard.

Perhaps that was what drew her to him.

Or perhaps it was the stories he told.

* * *

By the time he was ten, no one could recall whether Bard had been the name given him by his mother at birth, or the name settled on by unspoken agreement of the townspeople. But Bard he was, and Bard he would stay. To most people the name was a joke, a mockery of the ragged little nobody who thought himself a king's own troubadour. He would scurry around town doing his father's bidding, making small deliveries, transferring cargo from the leaky old barge _Sindra_ to the rickety length of dock they paid rent on each month. And while he scurried, he sang under his breath. He never sang the bawdy, rousing folk songs treasured by all in his caste, and he didn't know the grand lays that were dusted off for high feast days. Instead, he embellished the old tales that everyone knew from the cradle, put a tune to each one, and rhymed them as best he could.

"What you muttering?" the dockworkers would grunt at him while he stacked a load of barrels from the Elf-King. "Those ain't real songs, nohow. Let's have '_Sally's Skirt I' The Current_'! That there's a proper workin' song!"

Or, "You keep on about Dragons and you'll have your own arse crisped, and no one but yourself and my old willow switch to blame! Heave off, lad, and mind the pilings!"

Whereupon Bard would sing under his breath until his jeering detractors were out of hearing.

"Ye've heard of Smaug the Dragon," he said thoughtfully to the prow of his father's barge while he rowed it slowly to the shoreline where woodcutters had already laid in a large stack of kindling to be transferred to the town. "Aye, ye've heard of him, the great ugly Dragon Hisself; but what ye've not heard of is the Raven who drove him to skulk away in his hidey-hole till kingdom-come, all by means of a fair day's taunting." And he began to hum a simple little tune to the barge, and then, when he had worked out the words, to sing:

_"No steed was he, the Dragon King_

_for man to ride on seated._

_For Smaug was large and quick of wing_

_And couldna be defeated._

_Whenever his great neck he'd swing,_

_Everyone nearby retreated._

_._

_The Raven was a little bird_

_but clever as a junkyard dog._

_He croaked, 'You slow old grizzled lizard,_

_are you dragon or are you frog?"_

_Offensive were his cheeky words_

_to anyone, but especially Smaug._

_._

_Said Smaug, 'Impudent sooty chicklet!_

_Better get yer wings a-bouncin'!_

_I'll swallow you like a bitty biscuit!_

_I'll cook you in my flamey fountain!'_

_But Raven he didna scare a bit,_

_but said, 'I'll race ye to the mountain!_

_._

_And if I reach the mountain first_

_Ye'll leave the town, and turn yer cheek.'_

_So Smaug he laughed a fiery burst_

_and flexed his shoulders and his beak._

_But afore he'd a chance to do his worst,_

_Raven'd already claimed the peak!_

_._

_Smaug was so shamed he hung his head_

_and crawled away to sulk in peace._

_Thereafter he took to his bed_

_and ne'er again came out to feast._

_The folk were free once Smaugy fled_

_and praised small Raven from west to east._

_._

_To nary a soul did our hero reveal_

_that he could never ha' hoped to show_

_if the race had been a lawful deal._

_Though Raven'd left Smaug far below,_

_the bird who that day claimed the hill_

_was only clever Raven's shadow."_

It wasn't very good, perhaps, but after all Bard was only very young, and had to concentrate on poling the heavy old barge as much as on meter and rhyme.

* * *

Bard came from a long line of shamed men, beginning with Girion Lord of Dale, who had fired arrow after arrow at Smaug during the evacuation of Dale, and missed his mark each time. In a town as isolated as Laketown hardly a soul could not claim kinship with Lord Girion, if they looked back far enough. But Bard descended from Girion in a straight line, through six generations of firstborn sons, and it was his misfortune to closely resemble the few remaining images of that old failure. Bard could always be relied upon to remind a whole roomful of drunkards that no matter how pathetic they were, at least _they_ hadn't doomed a whole city of people to dank living on a cold lake.

Things had not always been so bad for Girion's line. The first few Masters of Laketown had been his sons and nephews, and once, his granddaughter. Even when the line passed out of prominence, they held businesses and owned some property, and were neither more nor less than any other citizen.

But the Master of Laketown who preceded the present one had made unwise investments with the townspeople's money, and hard times had come; and the people had begun to whisper that perhaps the early royalists were right, and that Girion's line should be restored. When certain documents arose proving that in fact their present financial woes were the fault of Borin, and not of the Master at all, all talk of restoring Girion's line was put to rest. Borin always claimed that the evidence had been falsified, but he could not prove it, and lost everything save his barge, the _Sindra_, with which he eked out the barest of livings. His first wife had wasted away, from shame some people said, and his second wife had lost five babies before finally producing Bard, and died before the afterbirth was cleaned from her wee son's face. Borin in his bitterness took to drink, and kept the _Sindra_ moving just long enough for young Bard to take over it at the tender age of twelve.

The present Master of Laketown was a shrewd businessman, and the town did well under him; and if the distinction between classes became a little steeper than it had been before, and if the wealth that poured into the town stuck mostly to the top half, and never splashed down below—well, that was just economics. _Work hard and prosper_, he said in his election speeches, and those who prospered agreed, and nobody listened to those who didn't.

But the royalist whispers were never quite so dead that a little fanning mightn't give new life to the flames; and the new Master of Laketown was not so secure in his following that he could afford to pass up a joke about Girion's aim, and the absurdity of that whole disgraceful line.

* * *

When Bard was small, before his father's drinking drove away his last paternal instincts, Borin would regale his only son and heir with tales of Girion and Dale. Perhaps it would have been better for Bard if he had never gotten a taste for the grandeur of the past, but lorecraft was one of the few things he took from his father, for good or ill. The only people in the town who would listen to Bard without laughing at him were small children, those too young to have yet decided that Bard's singing was, at best, "putting on airs" and, at worst, a threat to the precarious financial security of the town. Nobody would have believed that he sang simply because he liked it.

At any rate little children did not stay little in that town for long, and too soon the boys who had so recently sat and listened wide-eyed to his songs were big enough to chase him around throwing oyster shells at his head; and the little girls who had laughed at Raven's exploits and shuddered at Smaug's avarice and sighed at Girion's nobility—well, those very girls were quick to turn away disdainfully if he but smiled at them.

There were some, fishwives and men with young sons of their own, mostly, who would have been kind to Bard if he had let them; but when he was small he didn't notice, and when he grew older he would not have believed it in any case.

* * *

Bard was an obedient son if not an enthusiastic one, and learned early to row and pole barrels of fish or wine or mead to and from the Landing where the Elves and the businessmen of Laketown conducted the chief part of their business. It was cold, boring, smelly work, and no one envied Bard of it, though not a soul voiced the opinion (if any indeed felt it in the first place) that he was too young to have the sole responsibility for a business which ought by rights to be run by his father. Nor did any pub in town decline to sell Borin his weight in ale. His sole entertainment on the barge was his own imagination, which soon became his only escape from ugly reality.

But Bard's experience of life in Laketown was not in any regard typical. Even the poor children got days off, and sweet-meats to eat on their birthdays. Further up the scale, children of respectable businessmen and -women could be sure of a bit of schooling, and a new pair of shoes every year. Children who wore silken coats and ringlets in their hair were by no means unheard-of, although Bard could not begin to envision their lives.

But no little child in that town could enjoy luckier circumstances than Grethe, the daughter of the Master's scribe. If Bard was the loneliest and most unloved child in town, Grethe was the most extravagantly treasured.

While Bard, at twelve, was gluing yet another scrap of bad leather to the soles of his handed-down boots so as to get another month's wear out of them, the seven-year-old Grethe was being laced into a brand new dress of green and yellow silk. When Bard, at thirteen, was easing his drunk father's head down on a sack of wheat for a pillow in their drafty house, Grethe was being tucked into a feather bed by a mother who stroked her hair and kissed her cheek. And when Bard was fourteen, doggedly humming a new song to himself so he wouldn't have to listen to the group of younger lads who followed him through town tossing spoiled vegetables at the backs of his legs, little Grethe was cozied up in her father's lap, reading a brightly-illustrated history of Dale from the Master's own library.

Grethe was the only daughter of the house, and was doted on as even her elder brother Bain was not. Her family possessed both wealth and status, for her father was scribe to the Master of Laketown and knew at least as much about its laws and statutes as the elector did himself. When she was little, and brought to meet the Master who had been but recently raised to office, he had patted the top of her head and whispered conspiratorially that she was welcome to any book in his library, as he wasn't much of a reader himself and they oughtn't go to waste. She grew up reading grand accounts of Men and Elves and Dwarves, and long tomes of epic poetry, and Elvish volumes of philosophy and natural history. In her father's personal library she could find books with talking animals and morals, and little girls who fell asleep for a hundred years or fell into enchanted pools with treasure at the bottom, and Queens who raised lowly chimney-sweeps from poverty to royalty on account of their virtue. Only one bookshelf was kept locked. Her mother wore the key to it on her big iron chatelaine, and would open it every few weeks and sit in the striped armchair with a mug of honeyed buttermilk and a big plate of biscuits, sighing over some book or another with her hand on her heart. Grethe once sneaked into the locked bookcase and read _The Doom of Túrin Turambar_ from beginning to end, but that ended with her in tears, huddled in her mother's lap, while her father wrung his hands and paced and wondered what he had done to deserve so unnaturally precocious a child.

The answer to this was that Grethe was so cosseted and adored that it never occurred to her that there was a thing she might not do. She was pretty and large-eyed, with chestnut-colored hair that shone like duchess satin, and plump pink cheeks that dimpled when she smiled. There had been some difficulty about her birth which made her parents fear they might lose her, but she had been a very easy baby after that. In many ways she was still an easy child, in spite of her precociousness, for there was nothing spiteful or quarrelsome in her nature, and if she was perhaps a bit spoiled, she was not, on the whole, selfish.

When she was very small she idolized her brother Bain, some twelve years her senior. Bain and Grethe were not very much alike, but they loved each other, and he could always spare a few minutes to read to her if she asked, and it was he who taught her to do some of the fancier strokes in the shallows on the southeast bank of the Lake. Mostly he was busy with schooling, and later on with learning his father's business, but he found time for her even when they were apart. He practiced his penmanship by scratching out little stories about pretty brown-haired girls who went on adventures and found charmed rings and magical swords, and then sewed the pages together and presented them to her bound in velvet or leather. And although it was not their parents' intention that Grethe should follow her brother and her father into business, Bain always gave his old lesson-books to her because she passionately desired to know everything he did.

Cosseted as she was, Grethe was not left to run wild. She had a governess for most of her childhood. Miss Matlin was affectionate and capable, and taught Grethe to stitch a straight seam without even looking, and later, to work flowers and birds and celestial bodies in colored silk thread on velvet. She taught her young charge to dress herself to advantage, to sing and to play a little harp, and to dance. Papa taught her to read in two languages, and to speak in four. Mama taught her to mix a hundred different remedies for sickness, and to recognize their needs and uses, and to draw competently. Like all the children of Laketown, she did not have to learn to swim, but came out knowing it already.

* * *

_A/N: My eternal gratitude goes out to celestial1 for dreaming up this headcanon, letting me write it all down and then beta-ing it. If you enjoy this story, I entreat you to head over to her page for more excellent stories about Bard and the -lings._


	2. Chapter 2

Like all children, Grethe loved festivals. Her favorite was the Flight Festival, celebrating the escape of the citizens of Dale from the burning city nearly two hundred years earlier. The Festival took place in the Fairgrounds on the mainland, at the end of summer; and merchants came to it from Mirkwood and the Iron Hills and the Sea of Rhûn, and as far away as North Ithilien. She loved to sit in her father's lap with a mug of frothy milk-and-honey as he drank with other scholarly folk and discoursed on everything from trade to history to athletics. Or she might accompany her mother to make purchases of Gondorian lace and Elvish mead and Dorwinion wine and pungent pipeweed from Eriador; Mama could get the best price for anything by haggling, arguing and cajoling in turn. And she was never so proud as when she watched Bain trounce the other young men in foot races and breath-holding contests. Grethe always went home from the Festival sleepy and content, full of candy and fatty roasted meat, her pockets stuffed with the trinkets her parents and Bain could not resist buying her.

When Grethe was thirteen, and old enough for her precociousness to start to be more terrifying than amusing for her parents, the Flight Festival took on especial importance for her. She was beginning to notice things she'd not noticed before, like how the heroines in her father's histories never got to be heroines but by doing something quite dreadful first. Her favorite was Luthien, of course, who seduced Morgoth himself and freed her feeble human lover from the demon's dungeons. But she loved also Idril Celebrindal, who led a band of survivors from besieged Gondolin through a secret tunnel she had caused to be dug under the very noses of Balrogs and Dragons. Nor could she get enough of stories about the proud, fierce Galadriel of Lorien, who stood with the Kinslayers and would live forever exiled from Valinor under the Doom of Mandos. All of her favorite heroines had Elvish blood in them, and so lived long; but Grethe was only a human girl, and thought that if she ever meant to be a heroine she had better start soon. The Flight Festival seemed a logical place to commence, as both decorum and chaperones would be more relaxed than usual.

It was easy enough to slip out from under her governess's eye; Miss Matlin had partaken of a cup or two of ale, and was more than happy to sit with Friddie the under-bookkeeper in the shade of a large tree. Grethe left the two of them flirting and darted off into the thicker shadows away from the shore.

For a steady hour or two Grethe stomped happily through the undergrowth, thinking and whistling to herself and thoroughly enjoying the nigh-unprecedented sensation of being quite alone, until she began to realize that she was hungry, and all the food was behind her.

"Adventuring's thirsty work," she said to herself, looking around for a handy stream or perhaps a pool of crystalline depths which might show her her future in addition to quenching her thirst. But nothing was to be found but trees, and bushes, and insects, and more trees.

A half hour later, Grethe gave it up as a bad start, and turned back. Perhaps she would have more excitement at the Festival, she decided. After all, that was where the fireworks were.

An hour after that, she had to sit down and acknowledge that she was lost, and thirsty, and not a little tired of adventuring.

Grethe looked around her. She was sitting on an oak stump in a little clearing. Her tramp through the woods had humbled her a little bit, but she still fancied herself wise enough to recognize a man-made clearing when she saw one. The stumps were all sawed off near the ground, not fallen naturally. If this was a logging-ground for the woodcutters from Laketown, there must be a path nearby leading back to the pier, from which locale she could easily find the fairgrounds.

She was still searching for a path when she heard him.

His voice was honey-rich and carried well, and it was a while before she could place a face to the sound of it. But at last a disreputable-looking black-haired youth, some years older than herself, came smacking through the underbrush with a long knife in one hand. His face was too serious for its age, and filthy to boot. So terrible he was as he slashed at a hanging vine or a tenacious bush that Grethe could with little difficulty imagine him slaying foes in the old epics.

"Can you tell me the way out of here!" she shouted at him, breathless and nervous, for he looked almost wild enough to do her harm. He leapt a full foot in the air at the sound of her voice, and dropped his knife, and looked about him in startlement, as if the sound of a young girl's voice was less welcome than a goblin's warcry.

Finally he saw her standing by the big oak trunk, twisting her hands in her broidered apron.

"Who're you?" he asked suspiciously, edging a few steps closer but keeping a healthy distance between them, as though he were afraid of her. Grethe giggled at this performance. The sound seemed to alarm him more than it should, as if her laughter was a drawn spear or a hurled stone.

"Grethe, of course," she said. "Who're you?"

"I'm Bard," said the black-haired lad. Grethe's breath caught in her throat: she had heard all sorts of hair-raising tales about this fellow. How marvelous to encounter someone gruesome stories were told about—and on her very first adventure, too! She smiled broadly.

"Well," she said confidently, "I got lost, so you'll have to take me back again." She stalked off in the direction he'd come from, and was genuinely surprised when he did not follow. She turned to him expectantly. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you going to show me the way back, or what?"

"Or what," answered Bard. "I've got to get kindling or there'll be no fireworks, and you know if there's no fireworks everyone'll just shit theirselves angry, an' I'll be to blame. So if you want to be shown the way back you'll have to wait till I'm good and ready."

Grethe frowned. She was not used to this sort of treatment from anybody.

"But Mama and Papa'll be wondering where I've got to," she pointed out.

"Let 'em wonder," he said. "Or better yet, go on and find 'em yer own self; I'm busy."

"I can't," said Grethe. "I got lost three times already. I dasn't try for a fourth. I might end up in Smaug's left nostril before I even notice I've strayed from my path." This earned a small but real smile from Bard.

"Go ahead," he said indulgently, "how'd ye get lost three times?"

"Well," said Grethe, settling back down on her oak stump while Bard dragged a large busted sapling into the clearing and began hacking it to bits with his knife. "The first time was when I crossed over the stream, instead of following it uphill. By the way, I should have had a drink there too, only I didn't realize I would be thirsty later on. The second time was when I took a chance and jumped over a ditch I knew I hadn't seen coming in, and never found it again to retrace my steps. The third time was when I got into a little field all full o' forget-me-nots so blue they were like a reflection of the sky, or a flower model of the Lake on a sunny day."

"And how'd that last one lose you, then?"

"Oh, I had to do several spins out of joy, and got dizzy and forgot which side of the field I'd come in from," said Grethe. "I just picked a direction at random and walked, and ended up here, and here you are, so you see it all worked out."

"Aye, for you it did, mebbe."

"If it had gone on till nightfall I could've just followed the fireworks," said Grethe. "But I'd rather see them up close, with a nip of sweet wine in my hands and a pasty or two in my pocket for company."

"Aye, well."

"What was it you were singing?" she asked, folding her legs up on the stump and tucking her skirts in around them. "When I heard you coming. You were singing something. It sounded grand."

"An' you'll be the first to think so," said Bard.

"Oh," said Grethe, "you mean because you're always so…" Bard straightened up and stopped cutting branches off his sapling, and peered at her. She found that she did not care to go on.

"I'm always so…?" he prodded.

"Well, you know," she said, "you're the, um...the…" She wasn't quite sure how to phrase _mad son of the town drunk_ without giving offense, and so somewhat belatedly bit her tongue. But he gleaned her meaning somehow anyway, or something close to it, for offense is what he took.

"Aw, find yer own way back," he said, scowling. He sheathed his knife in a loop in his torn breeks, and stomped away.

"Oh, Bard, wait!" she cried, running after him. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be rude, truly!" She caught his hand and looked up at him, near tears. "I really am sorry," she gulped. "Only I'm so thirsty, and I've been lost for hours now, and I wanted to have an adventure only instead I'm just annoying you and now you won't take me back to the festival and if I don't see those fireworks I'll just...I'll…"

Bard peered down at her from what seemed a great height, with an expression of warring pity and annoyance. But eventually the pity won, for he sighed and disentangled his hand from hers, and reached for a sloshing waterskin hooked onto his belt.

"Here," he said, proffering the skin. "At least ye'll not die o' thirst while I look on. Well, take it, lass, go on, then."

Grethe took the skin and sipped from it delicately. It was only plain water, without any fruit or spices steeped in it or anything, but she was so thirsty she didn't care. She drank until it was almost all gone, then remembered her manners and handed it back.

"Thanks," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she dipped him her very nicest curtsy, just in case he had some biscuits ferreted away that he might share if she was very polite.

Bard took a tiny sip of what remained of his water and slung it back on the loop in his belt. Then he walked back to his abandoned sapling and, as if nothing had happened, began hacking it to pieces again. Grethe went back to her oak stump and waited patiently.

"Did you really think it was grand?" Bard said after a while. He sawed tenaciously at a branch with the serrated edge of his knife, his mouth pressed into a straight line, the tendons of his wrists standing out under the ragged cuffs of his shirt. But his voice was pleased.

"Aye," said Grethe. "Only I didn't hear but a line or two." She watched him stack up the wood from the dismantled tree, then start on a new one. "Are you...are you planning to be very long at this?"

Bard glanced up at her, then back down at his work. "Ye're welcome to go any time ye like," he said to the crackling branch in his hands.

"Oh, it's not that," said Grethe hurriedly. "Only, do you think you have time to sing me the whole thing? You can have the rest of the water, if you like."

Bard was incredulous. "I can have...the rest of my own water?" he repeated slowly, staring at her with one eyebrow up. Grethe nodded, smiling broadly. "Well, if that don't just beat all," he said, shaking his head.

After a pause,"You really do want to hear the rest?"

"Oh, please."

"All right," said Bard. He dragged another large branch over to him and started to cut it up. Then he began to sing in time to the strokes of his knife; self-consciously at first, then more freely, until he seemed to forget Grethe was there at all.

_"A jewel there was which graced the blue,_

_within whose brilliance all lights shone._

_Its glare was gift and trial too._

_Behold the Arkenstone!_

_._

_The beauty of this gem surpassed_

_a sunrise, or a maiden's glance,_

_as e'er it swung in circles vast_

_in its celestial dance._

_._

_Afar away, and far away_

_it knew naught of the mortal's strain;_

_of hunger, cold, nor toil's hard fray:_

_it knew nothing of pain._

_._

_This jewel it gleamed high, fair and bright_

_unreachable by all below._

_Drove more than one to hate the sight_

_of such a distant glow._

_._

_It shone on all, both rich and poor,_

_till under its unfeeling eye_

_all thoughts of hope and love forebore._

_All were prepared to die._

_._

_It by its gleam did mark the way_

_that every living soul has flown,_

_till all who'd lived lay cold and gray:_

_Behold the Arkenstone!"_

As he sang, it seemed that the aching stoop fell from his shoulders, and he stood straighter, like a warrior or a king. For all his filth, and his ill-fitting clothes, it seemed to Grethe that not another man in Laketown could match him for bearing, not even the Master, or her own dear Bain. People whispered that Bard was descended from Lord Girion of Dale, in a tone of voice that said he could be heir to Gil-Galad himself, it wouldn't save him being a disgrace and an embarrassment. But Grethe thought, as she watched him singing in the sunlight, that he could tell her he was Lord of Dale reborn and she'd believe it. By the end of the song Grethe found it hard to look at him directly. Her head drooped almost to her chest and she looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap, but didn't really see them. After the last note had had a chance to die down, Bard let out a weary sigh.

"Ye can wake up now," he said resignedly, "it's over."

"I wasn't sleeping," Grethe said humbly, "I was thinking."

"Oh, aye?" he said, cautiously interested.

"Where is that song from, Bard?"

"It en't from nowhere," he answered. "Only here." And he tapped one finger against his temple.

"You mean to say you made it up?" she asked skeptically.

Bard nodded. "Aye, I thought it up when I was running firewood supplies all last winter, an' the sun so pale and faraway, an' not a soul out on the Lake but me." There was a long pause. "An' what'd ye think?" he prompted, cautious still but also curious now.

Grethe took a while to answer, but finally said, "I was thinking of the Silmarils, and how when Fëanor first made them he wore them on his hat for everyone to see, but he grew jealous of them, and hid them away, and later died fighting over them. But they weren't evil, they were good; it's just that men did evil things because they wanted them so much, and couldn't have them. And the Arkenstone in your song is like that, too, not evil, exactly, but so beautiful and elusive it can make people go mad from wanting it and not having it."

She was also thinking, though she'd never have breathed a word of it to him, that it was one thing to sass the mad son of the town drunk, about whom not one kind syllable was ever uttered, and quite another to be impudent to someone who could dream up songs like this. Poor as he was, he seemed now like a hero out of a tale: strange and grim, but with a light like the Arkenstone flickering in his breast. If she had been brave enough to look up at him now, she would have seen a pleased flush under all the dirt on his face. But she did not.

"Well," said Grethe to her hands, "I'd no notion folks were still making up songs like that. Have you got any more?"

"Aye, I've got more, an' more than enough." The last echo of the song had died down from his voice, so that she dared to peek up at him again. She was relieved and disappointed to see him plain Bard once more, with filth-smeared hands and a low-born accent. But something of Girion still clung about him like a mist.

"Tell them to me." Then, remembering her manners, she added, "...Please?"

"All right," said Bard, considering. "But not now, though. I've got my faggot o' kindlin' all set, an' if I show up with you in tow after the sun's gone down I'll be hided and burned and tossed in the lake afore I can sing so much as a note. Come along, then, lass, let's go."

* * *

Grethe went so far as to help Bard carry his stack of kindling back to the festival, though as soon as she spotted her parents standing with Bain and Miss Matlin, she dropped her bundle and ran toward them. Her mother let out a yell and rushed toward her daughter, and swept her into her arms and kissed her hair and face.

"Where have you been, child?" she demanded, angry and worried both. Papa cleared his throat and jerked his head in Bard's direction, who was walking toward them, his faggot still on his back and Grethe's discarded bundle cradled in his arms. Papa laid an arm on Bain's shoulder to stop him running at Bard, but they both glared murderously at him the whole time he approached.

"And what's _that one_ been doing with you in yon grove?" Papa thundered. Bard blanched under all his dirt.

Grethe was just old enough to know that there was something about her age and Bard's gender that made her parents more distrustful of him than if he'd been the _daughter_ of the town drunk. She knew that if she didn't explain things properly they'd never let her spend another minute with him, and she'd never hear another of his songs from beginning to end; and that was one thing she could not bear. And so she did not try to pretend it had not been naughty of her to run away from Miss Matlin, however she might be punished for it. She told them the exact truth—or at least, the exact truth that they needed to hear.

"And oh, Da," she finished, "don't be sore at him, please, for I'd still be lost and the sun going down, if he hadn't chanced to find me."

Bain and Papa seemed still half-inclined to gut Bard on the spot, but Mama intervened.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Bain," she said briskly, "don't stand there gawping, but help Bard with that load. We thank you, lad, for bringing us our girl back safe and sound. We're sorry for any trouble she was to you."

"No trouble, Mistress," said Bard, bemused. "Yer most welcome."

"Mama," said Grethe, capitalizing on the moment, "Bard sang me a wonderful song, and he promised to sing more some time."

"Oh, that's…" Mama faltered, but breeding kept her afloat. "That's very nice, dear. Only don't go bothering him when he's at work." And Mama hustled her away before she could voice any more expectations about future dealings with Bard.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think!_


	3. Chapter 3

Bard did not honestly expect to see the lass Grethe again. Her parents had looked at him like he was something dangerous and unclean, though the Mistress at least had made an effort to hide it. He was sorry to see Grethe go, and sorry to think he'd not see her again, for he'd liked what she said about his song. She'd talked about it as if it were something fine, and not shameful; and she'd not once shushed him or laughed at him as other people did. He rather liked her laugh, which made him feel a part of the joke, and not the butt of it.

But Bard had not accounted for Grethe's stubbornness. Only a few weeks after the Festival, he looked up from a knot he was tying on a bale of cloth to see Grethe flying down the dock toward him, her brown ringlets flying around her face. She missed her footing and thudded into the bundle, and would have toppled into the water if she'd not grabbed for Bard's coat at the last second. Before he had even registered that she had actually come back to see him, it crossed his mind that he would be sorry to see her fall into that murky, foul-smelling water and ruin her nice dress. Grethe straightened up, laughing, her feet still sliding on fish-guts.

"How d'ye do, lass?" Bard grunted, trying not to smile.

"I do just fine, thanks," she said airily. "Are you busy?"

"Aye."

Her face fell. "Well, when aren't you busy?"

"I'm busy most of the time," he admitted.

"But you said you'd sing me more songs." The lass put on a pretty little pout which had no doubt never failed her before. But it failed her now.

"Aye, but not if it means I've got to stop working," he said. "Rent on the dock is due end of this week, and my house needs a new coat of daub afore winter sets in."

The pout deepened. Bard wished he could have given her a different answer.

"Well," said Gerthe, sorrowfully, "I'd best get along home, then. It's only that it's such a very long way…" She sighed meaningfully. "Isn't there anyone around here who could row me back? It's all the way on the other side of town, and my feet are tired."

Bard looked at her for a moment.

"Aye, well," he said, relenting, "just let me get this block to the Docksmaster, and I'll row ye home, ye sly little thing."

Grethe beamed.

Half an hour later, Grethe was settled happily in one end of Bard's little ketch, which he used for small deliveries and for getting himself around quickly. He pushed off of the pier and rowed steadily for several minutes, to get clear of the filth around the docks.

"Which way to your house?" he asked.

Grethe pointed. "Shortest way is to the southeast pier, around past the Market."

Bard grinned and turned the ketch in the other direction. Grethe looked confused for a moment, and then her expression cleared and she laughed.

"Do you think you could get us away from town?" she said. "The smell is bothering me."

"All right," agreed Bard, and swung the boat a little further out onto the lake. He rowed steadily but slow, not wishing to tire himself out on something he wasn't even getting paid for.

Grethe rooted around in her pocket and withdrew a bundle of clean white linen which, unfolded, revealed a nice little lunch of soft bread and good crumbly cheese and a meat pie, still warm. She held the pie out to Bard. He had to stop rowing to take it, but Grethe didn't seem to mind the delay.

"Did ye get walloped good for running off from the fair?" asked Bard around a mouthful of meat and gravy.

"Not a bit," she said. "I had to stay in my room for three whole days, but that was all right. Anyway, they didn't start the punishment till after the Festival was done, so I didn't miss anything."

Bard chewed thoughtfully. This brand of discipline was one which had never occurred to him. He wondered if it worked. "And," he said, following his train of thought to its logical conclusion, "kin ye expect to be locked in yer room another three days, soon as I get ye home?"

Grethe laughed delightedly. "Probably only one day, or just through supper," she said. "They'll have guessed where I've gone, and I won't have been out very long. They punish me longer, the more they're frightened. But I know they don't mean it."

"An' has it occurred to you that it's bein' with _me_ as frightens 'em?" Bard asked carefully, not looking at her. She was young, but perhaps not so young as to be totally oblivious to the sorts of things that frightened parents of daughters. And he liked the lass, but he wasn't about to be run out of town just because she had no notion of the risk she put on him, seeking him out like this.

"I've guessed it," she said. "I don't know why, other than that everyone says you're, you know."

"Mad," he finished for her, forcing the last bit of pie past a sudden lump in his throat. "Aye, I know."

"And I think it's also something to do with you're being, well, practically a man and everything. I don't really know why but that does seem to be the chief trouble. Only I don't see how you can help it."

Bard wished very much for a swallow of water just now. His throat felt dry and close.

"Ah," he said. "Yes, that's true. Only they won't see it that way. An' after all, if your parents care to worry about you so much, mebbe it's best you don't give 'em too much to worry over."

"But that's what parents do," said Grethe, as if pointing out the obvious.

"Some of 'em."

"Here," said Grethe, holding out a wine skin. The wine was very light, the best Bard had ever tasted, and left no metallic sting in his mouth.

"Thanks."

Grethe dusted the bread-and-cheese crumbs off her lap and pulled one last item from her pocket.

"What'sat?" asked Bard, eyeing the green lump suspiciously. Grethe smiled and sliced a bit off of it with a small bone-handled knife.

"Try it," she encouraged, holding out the piece on the end of her knife.

Bard took the whatever-it-was and popped it into his mouth. It was fruit, that much he knew, but it wasn't a fruit he'd ever had before. Most of the fruit he ate was dried or half-spoiled, that being all he could afford. He occasionally enjoyed a fresh apple, when they were in season on the mainland; and this was a little like that, but softer and juicier, and far more delicate.

"Give up?" said Grethe. "It's pear! They don't dry well, and they spoil quickly, but the Master got a shipment in and gave me one of the little ones." She held out another, thicker slice.

"I hate to be eatin' your present," said Bard, but he could not help reaching for it. It was even nicer than the wine.

"I don't mind," said Grethe blithely, "I'd rather see you eating it. I can have another one when we dine with the Master tomorrow night. He's going to serve them poached in brandy."

"Mm."

Bard ate most of the pear, and drank a little more of the wine, and then resumed rowing a wide slow arc around the town.

"Bard?" asked Grethe shyly. "Do you think you might sing me another song? Or are you too winded from rowing?"

"I could," he said carefully. "If you're sure you really want to hear."

"Please, may I?" She smiled eagerly.

So Bard cleared his throat, and looked out at the water, and sang.

_"On the mainland, in the summer,_

_dappled and bright the flowers sway._

_But on the Lake, the sun yet slumbers,_

_and cold winds blow its warmth away._

_**.**_

_On the mainland, in the autumn,_

_the trees all wear a gilded gleam._

_But on the Lake, from top to bottom,_

_Not a single leaf is seen._

_**.**_

_On the mainland, in the winter,_

_blanket-soft the white snow drifts._

_But on the Lake, ice cracks and splinters,_

_black slurry oozing through the rifts._

_**.**_

_On the mainland, in the springtide,_

_the waking green it blooms and spreads._

_The Town on the Lake is the great divide_

_'tween what is living and what is dead."_

He did not look at Grethe through all the singing of the song, but he glanced over at her now. She was staring out over the lake.

"You don't like living here," she said quietly, not looking at him but gazing fixedly at the shoreline. "I think if you'd had a Mama and Papa like mine, you'd like it more than you do. But I think you'd still be unhappy here, deep down." Finally she turned to look at him. "Why is that, Bard?"

Bard shrugged uncomfortably. "Ye canna build anything on the water and expect it to stay put," he said. "Everythin' rots and sinks and breaks, and we just go on buildin' on top of it, so the past never goes away; but ye kin never plan for anything new. Look." He paused in his rowing to point at a spot a few yards distant. "You see those wood pilings, just under the surface, there?"

Grethe leaned and peered, not seeing what Bard could not help but see every day of his life. He put a hand under her elbow to steady her as she shifted to a better position.

"Oh! I see it now!" exclaimed Grethe. "Were those always there?"

"Aye," said Bard, taking up his oars again. "From long before Laketown was built, when it was still Esgaroth, before even there were people in Dale. Those pilings are a torment to bargemen, and any boatman whose craft rides low in the water. They're hard to see, and they're sunk too deep in the lake silt to be pulled out, and too rotten to build on top of. They're naught but grave markers for a town that died a long time ago. All of Laketown's like that, built on a the mouldering bones of an older city. We just keep throwing more wood under the foundations, hoping to hold up the dead wood with new; and everyone here knows how to swim, and hopes for the best."

"Well, it sounds perfectly dreadful, when you put it like that," said Grethe with a small smile.

"Could be it's worse for me, on account o' being who I am."

"You mean, the heir to the infamous Girion?" said Grethe. "Well, Papa's read me lots about the history of Dale and Laketown, and I don't think it's your fault if someone you never met once failed to shoot down a dragon. At least he tried. I wouldn't be brave enough even for that, I bet, and neither would any of the silly sots who poke fun at you for it. I wish they wouldn't, because it isn't fair."

"I wish that too," said Bard. "You never can be sure how brave you'll be till you come to it, nohow. Everyone's taunted me all my life about it, so I hardly even notice anymore." This was not entirely true, but Bard had no desire for pity. "I didn't even want to learn to shoot, because I was afraid that I'd be terrible at it, and the taunting would get worse."

"And were you?"

Bard felt a small glow of pride. "I'm fair," he admitted. Then, unable to keep from boasting just a little, he added, "'Twas me who shot the big buck was on the Master's table at Snowtide last. May be it's not a dragon, but it filled its share of bellies."

"So, what made you decide to learn to shoot, after all?" asked Grethe.

Bard began bringing the boat in toward the southeast pier. "If I was good at it, mebbe it'd put some fresh meat on the table for once."

"How come I've never seen you shoot at any of the Fairs?" asked Grethe. "My brother always shoots, but he's only middling at it. If you shot that stag, I bet you're even good enough to win prizes."

"I'm always working," said Bard shortly, bringing the boat up against the dock.

A docktender in official livery stepped smartly forward to assist Grethe out of the boat. He murmured something in her ear, and she pulled a face.

"All right, I'll be along soon," she said. "Thank you, Hamish. Goodbye, Bard!"

And Bard was left to row himself back to the Landing as quickly as he could, and hasten to make up for half an afternoon wasted.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! Leave a review and have a lovely week!_


	4. Chapter 4

Grethe's parents soon realized that punishing her for trailing around after Bard would not work, and forbidding her to go off on her own would work even less. His reputation in Papa's circles was rather less damning than in the part of town where he lived, because Papa actually had access to written histories, and was therefore less likely to be swayed by gossip. Even the Master never bothered to make jokes about Girion in Papa's presence. And Papa figured that, whatever Borin had or hadn't done with the townspeople's money all those years ago, Borin was Borin and Bard was Bard.

But Bard was still a young man, and Grethe was a young girl, and that was its own danger. After Grethe had been punished a third time for sneaking off to see her inexplicable new friend, to absolutely no avail, Mama determined that the only solution was to let her have her head, and hope Grethe soon tired of Bard's common way of talking and the squalor which followed him around almost visibly. In the meantime, Grethe was never to be indoors with Bard, or to row with him out of sight of Laketown, and one of the servants must stay on the boardwalk which encircled the town, and watch to be sure she stuck to her agreement. But she would have, anyway. She did not want to get Bard into any trouble.

Had Grethe realized the motivation behind her parents' finally allowing her to "have her head", she would have laughed till her sides ached. What did it matter if he was so poor he made soup by boiling discarded fish guts in water, and wore clothes that had never a prayer of fitting him properly? What did it matter if his face and hands were always smeared with whatever he'd been transporting lately, or that he apparently cut his own hair with the same knife he used to cut kindling? He was Bard, progeny of Girion Lord of Dale, and the more Grethe heard him talk, the more he seemed like a figure out of a legend. The old tales seemed to live again when he told them. All the books in her father's library struck her as flat and dull after hearing one of the ancient lays sung in Bard's vibrant low voice. How could the townspeople fail to see what a grand figure Bard cut, underneath all the grime and stink and ill-fitting rags he called clothes?

But then, perhaps the townspeople simply did not have Grethe's imagination. Very few people did.

Bard could not always spare time for Grethe. He had told the truth when he claimed to be always busy. If he wasn't manning the _Sindra_, he was looking after his father. If he wasn't doing that, he was on the mainland, cutting wood or shooting game to eat or to sell at market. Sometimes Grethe would go to the docks and sit in the Dockmaster's hut chatting with his wife, only to be told after an hour's wait that Bard could not be pulled from his work.

It finally sunk in for her that Bard was poor. Very, very poor. Grethe, who in all her life had never been denied anything she seriously desired, came to realize that she was imposing on Bard dreadfully, and that he did her a kindness which she had hardly earned in reserving his rare moments of leisure for her (if never as much as she'd have wished). She tried to pay him for his efforts, but a sour look crossed his face as the pennies clinked into his hand, and she knew that he did not like it, though she didn't understand why. So instead she brought him food, and lots of it. This went over much better, and she liked to sit and watch him eat. He appreciated the taste of food more than anyone Grethe knew.

However much space Bard (and his stories) might occupy in Grethe's mind, most of her time was spent at home, learning to emulate her mother in the running of a household and the managing of servants. Grethe had always known that she would eventually marry, preferably someone at or slightly above her own station in life. Her parents counselled her not to marry too young, before she knew her own mind. Mistress Grundel, the Master's sister who had married late in life, advised her not to wait too long, lest her options diminish and she be forced to take whatever she was offered. Presumably there was an ideal age, which she would know when she saw it, for marrying optimally.

Papa would sometimes put his arm around her and say, "Now, Gertie, don't you think of marrying too soon, my love. Let your old father have a little while longer with his best girl."

Her Mama would pause in the middle of teaching Grethe some kitchenly accomplishment and sigh, with tears glistening in her eyes, and say, "I've so much still to teach you, and so little time to do it in. So little time…"

Both her parents hoped she would make a love match, whatever the more worldly among their social class might say. When Grethe was a few months shy of fifteen, Bain became engaged to Mistress Grundel's daughter Lisette, and their engagement party was Grethe's first taste of real grown-up society. It made her feel elegant and sophisticated to let well-dressed young men fetch her glasses of moon-wine or cider, and to reward them with dances. Soon she was being invited to even more parties, and her mother ordered her a new dress for each one, and she wore her hair pinned high on her head, and shoes with heels.

Sometimes, Grethe thought she might fall in love at one of these parties. But when she tried to picture her dance-partners standing in a sunlit clearing, singing a solemn elegy to the Arkenstone, they looked silly instead of noble. And how could she ever love a silly man?

It did finally become clear to Grethe that her parents had never wanted her to continue her friendship with Bard, and that they had expected her to abandon it long ago, and were beginning to think of its continuance as nothing short of an emergency. She feared that they might soon make a real effort to keep her from going out on the Lake with him. She was not a little girl anymore, and she wanted to do what was right; but she could not decide what that was. Her parents wanted her to give up the connection because it lent an unsavory air to things, and parental obedience was certainly an important virtue. For all her youthful exploits, Grethe had never disobeyed her parents on anything really serious before, and it would have broken her heart to disappoint them. And it was just possible that they were right; at the very least, they believed they were, and had only her future happiness in mind.

On the other hand, it would be dishonorable to discard him like an old hat or last year's shoes for no better reason than that her parents had a vague notion that he was tainting her marriage prospects by association. And anyway, by this time his voice and his stories had burrowed so far into the heart of her that it was useless to try to root him out. He was her friend and she would go on being his, until something stronger than parental paranoia made her stop.

"The Master's birthday was last night," she said one day while he brought the ketch in a lazy circle around town.

"Aye?" he said.

"He threw a very magnificent party. Moon-wine flowed like water. I had a new dress for it. Blue silk velvet, with lace at the sleeves."

"I'm sure you were very pretty," he said politely.

"Yes," agreed Grethe complacently. "I was."

"Then again," Bard went on, idly raising an oar from the water and watching the sunlight dance off the droplets falling from it, "I think I like you best like this."

"What do you mean?" asked Grethe, looking down at herself. She wasn't wearing anything special, except a yellow ribbon she wove through her braids when she went out with Bard because he'd said it made her look as if she'd got a sunbeam caught in her hair.

"I've seen ladies all dressed up for parties like the Master throws," said Bard. "They always look too stiff and starched, like. But you, now, you're all sort of...soft around the edges. Your hair is soft, and your dress is soft, and your eyes are soft. I wouldn't think a fancy dress could add aught to improve you, even if it is blue silk velvet. But that's only my opinion. No doubt I know nothing about it."

Grethe touched her fingertips to her lips to hide a pleased smile. Why could not one of the hundreds of compliments that streamed from the lips of her dance partners have been as nice as this simple and unadorned statement?

"Thank you, Bard," she said happily. Bard smiled at her and pulled the oars in, and leaned back in the boat, his eyes drifting closed against the weak glare of the sun.

"So, what else happened at this party of yours?" he asked without opening his eyes.

"Oh, lots of things," she said, trailing her hand in the water. "I danced with the Master a few times."

"How fine of you."

"He trod on my toes."

Bard laughed. "Did you dance with anyone your own age? Or only your Da's elderly business associates?"

"I danced with some perfectly nice young men," said Grethe. "My parents watched me like a hawk every time I did."

"Don't they trust you?"

"They trust me."

Bard opened one eye. "Then it's young men they don't trust," he guessed.

"Bard, if my parents didn't trust young men do you think there's a snowflake's chance in Erebor of my being out here with you this very minute?" she demanded with mock-severity.

"That's a fair point," he acceded, closing the eye again. "Then why'd they watch you so close?"

"They're waiting for me to decide on someone to marry," said Grethe, sighing. "Oh, they don't expect it to happen very soon, and it isn't as though I'd got anyone lined up for review, but…"

"Do they mind very much who you marry?" asked Bard, sitting up and dangling his hand over the side of the boat, trailing it in the water beside hers.

"Well, yes and no. They want it to be someone I really like, and they don't mind how long I take to be sure. But they do have certain material expectations for me. I'm afraid I'll never find someone who satisfies their wants and my own at the same time. Laketown isn't so very large, and I've met a fair sampling of the men here who are even close to suitable. And so far they've all seemed so...so…"

Her fingers flicked restlessly at the water.

"They all say the same sorts of things, over and over," she concluded, unable to think of a better way to express it.

"Is that so ill?" asked Bard.

"I don't know," said Grethe unhappily. "It's just that...well, I do love putting up my hair and wearing pretty shoes and dresses and things, and seeing how everyone looks in their feathers, but as soon as I'm actually there, everything goes flat. Even Bain's engagement party was like that. All the things that seem dull to me are the only things young men at parties ever want to talk about." She fell silent, contemplating the way Bard's hand seemed to bend where it touched the water. She had a sudden instinct to check it for a sprain; but of course, it was only the effect of the light on the water. She clenched her own fingers into a fist to keep from reaching for him.

"So," said Bard, "what'd these poor sods need to do to get you to notice them?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said. Then, boldly, "I _do_ know. They ought to talk about something other than their fathers' business, or whatever rumor happens to be freshest. They ought to ask me questions I really want to answer; and when I ask _them_ things, they ought to answer me truly, and not try to be clever if they aren't. Most of them couldn't be clever if they were thumped on the head with a wit-stick. They oughtn't care too much about what other people think of them, or at least they shouldn't be so obvious about it. They ought to have some imagination, and something interesting to say, and if they haven't, they ought not to speak at all."

"That's a rare tall bucket to fill."

"Oh," added Grethe, "and that reminds me, they must be tall."

Bard laughed heartily at this. "And how are they to help it if they are not?" he asked.

"How are they to help being clever and interesting if they are not?" countered Grethe. "Some things you can change, and some you can't."

"Aye, that's true enough." Bard took up his oars again.

"And what of you, Bard?"

"What of me, what?"

"Aren't you ever going to get married?"

Bard let out a short laugh. "I doubt it," he said, shaking his head. "An' who'd marry me, anyhow? Shall I find myself a particularly large lady-fish caught in a net, whose prospects can't get any worse? I can't think of a soul who'd have me, and that's a fact."

"I'd have you," said Grethe staunchly.

"No, ye wouldn't," said Bard, and there was a cynical note in his voice which hadn't been there a moment before, and his docks accent crept in under his words. He concentrated ferociously on his rowing. "Yer a fine lass, an' ye'll have a thousand prospects, an' just 'cause ye've not found one ye like yet's no reason to think ye never will." He glared up at her briefly, as though daring her to disagree, but this had instead the effect of enhancing her opinion of Bard as the ideal male. So stark was the contrast between the puppy-dog gazes of the lads she danced with at parties and Bard's fierce eyes under stern black brows that she laughed aloud. Bard's glare deepened.

"What're ye laughin' at?" he demanded crossly.

"You—but not for the reason you think," she giggled. "It's like I said: there's things you can change, and things you can't." Her laughter died abruptly and the words began to drop very fast from her lips. "Those lads' fortunes may rise or fall, but they'll never be but who they are. So might yours, for that matter. But whatever happens, you'll still be you, d'you see? It seems unwise to settle on someone who's got something unchangeable about them—poor humor, say, or foolishness—all because they _have_ got something changeable, like a business contract with the Elves, which might come apart at any moment. You see I'm only being logical about it, that's all. Please don't be angry, Bard, for I wasn't trying to tease you."

Bard's glare melted away. "Aye, lass, I do see," he said softly.

"So you've not answered my question," Grethe went. "Who would you marry, if you could?"

He regarded her silently for some time, thinking. "Well," he said at last, cracking a brittle grin, "If we're talking only of unchangeable things, then...then I'd look for the laughingest, bonniest lass I could find, who wasn't the sort to listen to rude gossip, and who'd had a good bit of book-learning, so she'd be able to teach our bairns how to read and write. She'd have to be brave, and kind-hearted, and not weighed down too much with things that aren't of consequence. And she'd have to have blue eyes." He crinkled his own eyes at her.

"Well, I don't know where you'll ever find such a lass," said Grethe, laughing. "You're too picky, Bard."

"It's as you said, isn't it?" said Bard solemnly. "I'm only being logical. I can't change what I want, or pretend I don't want it, or imagine I want something else instead."

Grethe had never before been looked at as Bard was looking at her now. Her pulse thumped vividly in her fingers and toes. "I meant what I said, Bard," she burst out impetuously. "I know you don't believe me, but I did mean it." She looked down at her prettily-shod feet, resting only a hand's-breadth from Bard's booted ones in the bottom of the boat. Could she live without silk stockings and fancy parties?

Well, and why shouldn't she? Bard did.

"I'll tell you this, then," said Bard, his voice low as if to prevent his words being overheard and reported. "There's things you can change, and things you can't, aye?" Grethe nodded slowly. "If any of those things _should_ change—say, I uncover a hoard of dwarves' gold, or snare a talking rabbit who grants wishes—and if you've not made up your mind yet about...about… Well, I'll be sure to ask you if you really meant what you said today. And if you meant it, you can tell me so then—and not a minute sooner."

"Do you promise, Bard?"

"Aye, lass, I promise," he said, reaching out to her. Bard's rough brown hand held her dainty pink one for a fleeting moment, and then he went back to rowing, and she went back to trailing her hand in the water, and although they looked at each other a great deal after that, neither of them felt much need to speak.


	5. Chapter 5

Bard had not intended to say anything to Grethe. In fact he had barely allowed himself even to think such things as he had said today, and it was a surety that his life would get harder now he'd thought and said them, and not easier. He was poor, and alone, and had always been so, and until this day he'd always known how to bear it.

But Grethe had only ever been rich, and loved, and she was young and had reason to hope. Some young lad in velvet breeches would know the things to say to her to make her feel as she wanted to feel, and she would marry him, and she would certainly never go out with Bard in his ketch again. A day ago, he had known this to be true, and it had not hurt him, or not much; for it was the way of the world, and he was used to it.

If only she hadn't said she would have him. She couldn't mean it. He couldn't allow her to mean it. And if she didn't mean it, it would have been better if she'd never said it. How was he to sleep or eat or go on working with his mind full of the words she'd said so carelessly? For it must have been careless. Grethe was rich, and loved, and could afford to be careless, as Bard fundamentally could not.

_There's things you can change, and things you cannot_. And she was young enough to think that one of those changeable things was wealth, for she'd never had to pay rent on a falling-down dock, pole a leaky barge through a rotting city, and receive less for her cargo than what was agreed-upon, only to turn around and hand half her earnings back over to the Master for the privilege of shitting in his lake. For the people of Bard's neighborhood, the only possible change was a change for the worse. A freeze could kill off all the hatchling fish, a barge could sink with a full load still on it, the Master could raise taxes yet again. Those were the only changes people like Bard knew. There were no hoards of dwarves' gold.

When he'd tied up the _Sindra_ for the night and gone into his house, where Da sat drinking morosely upstairs, and the fire downstairs had burned out, he tried not to imagine Grethe in this place. But he could not keep her out. When he closed his eyes, there was Grethe banking the fire properly for the night, so it wouldn't have to be rebuilt from scratch in the morning. There she was laying the table with Bard's splintery wooden dishes. There she was sitting on the three-legged stool in the corner, poring over a book, laughing quietly to herself.

When he'd climbed up into his tiny loft above the second floor where Da lived, he lay on his straw mat and went on trying not to imagine her living here. Da would have to move his bed into the office, of course, so Grethe and Bard could have the bedroom to themselves; they'd never fit in his loft, and when the children came…

Bard's eyes popped open. He turned over and punched the sack of rags he used as a pillow, to get it into shape. There, that was better; he could sleep now.

Grethe was bending low over him as he lay there, her small hand resting comfortably on his cheek. She was smiling, and the whole loft was filled with starlight.

"_You're not going to sleep in your clothes, Bard_," she was saying, with laughter in her voice. "_Here, then, let me help you with those…_"

Bard fell out of his loft, swearing.

* * *

Grethe was surprised to find that she could not simply go on living as she had before. She had not even suspected she might ever say such things to Bard as she'd said that day. Had the wine she'd had at luncheon gone to her head? Wine had never done that to her before, and she never drank very much of it, but perhaps it was a strong batch…

When she came down from her room the next morning, she knew that it could not have been the wine.

"Happy morning, love," said Mama from her place at the head of the breakfast table. Papa smiled at her around a mouthful of eggs, and Bain grinned cheekily.

"Your hair's a bird's nest, Gertie," he said. "Played hostess to a raven's ball in your dreams, did you?"

"Cant've; I didn't sleep," said Grethe, yawning.

"Why not?" Papa asked. "Was it the noise from over Berensen's place? Their youngest left for Mirkwood this morning and they were up all night with farewells—"

"Are you sickening for something?" asked Ma, bustling over to feel the back of Grethe's neck. "You're very warm, dear. I'll have some willow-bark tea made up straightaway."

"I'm all right," said Grethe. "Only tired." She looked at the pile of bacon laid in front of her, and her stomach turned over. "I'm all right," she said again.

That evening, the three older Berensen boys came over to toast the sister who had gone off on a journey; and then they toasted Grethe, paying compliment to her beauty and grace. Grethe sat staring through the flattery while Mama watched her closely for signs of growing affection. Any of the Berensen boys would do, she knew her mother was thinking, they would all have a very good living once they married, and every last one of them gay and cheery.

"_You're all sort of...soft around the edges_," Bard's voice was whispering in her ear. "_Your hair is soft, and your dress is soft, and your eyes are soft_."

Bard was not soft. He was lean and pointed, his face dominated by angular jaw and cheek and nose. There was not a spare handful of flesh anywhere on him, unless he kept it hidden under the many layers of clothes he wore, even in summer. She had never seen him strip down to breeches to swim in the Lake as the other townsmen did, as even her own stout Papa had been known to do. She didn't know what his ankles looked like, or his elbows. Were his arms hard? Were his shoulders? They must be, to shoot fast and sure enough to bring down a leaping stag...

"...a shame how he goes around, where anyone might see," the middle Berensen was saying. "Don't you agree, Grethe?"

"I'm sorry," said Grethe, trying to smile, "I must have been dreaming. How who goes around?"

"Bard, of course," he said, with the satisfied smile of one who knows himself superior in every way. "We were just saying he'd make a good Lord of Crows. Or Lord of Sparrows, if he'd ever wash his face!" Grethe felt a muscle behind her eye fluttering.

"Well, at least he's Lord of _something_," she snapped. "And what are you?"

The three Berensen boys gaped at her. Mama half-rose in her seat, looking mortified.

"Pardon me," Grethe said, standing, her face red—with anger, not embarrassment. "I must be more tired than I realized. Perhaps I had better retire. Please give my best to your parents." The three young men automatically stood when she did, and bowed.

"Good evening," they mumbled as she swept past them up the stairs.

* * *

Bard somehow dragged himself through the ensuing weeks. He struggled to make his mind stick to one thing. His usual means of passing the time, laying words to tune, eluded him; and when he tried to sing some of his old favorites, he found he could not keep the words straight in his head. If he dropped vigilance over his thoughts for even an instant, _she_ appeared in his brain like magic. He looked over his shoulder incessantly, hoping (though he knew his hope was foolish and would only hurt him in the end) to see her running toward him, sliding on the slippery loading dock and laughing. No one Bard had ever known laughed as much as Grethe.

One night several weeks after their last parting, Bard looked up from a late supper in his cold dark house to see a vaguely familiar face framed in the doorway of his house.

Bain had come to visit him.

Bard stood up so quickly his stool toppled over, and crossed the room to Bain in two strides.

"What is it?" he demanded without preamble. "Is Grethe hurt?"

"Grethe was well when I left her," said Bain, his face clouding over. "And if she were hurt, what reason could I have to come all this way to inform you of it? What are you to her?"

Bard stood half a head over Bain, but he suddenly felt small.

"Of course," said Bard, standing aside and righting his stool. "Come in. How may I serve?"

"My father has a small load in need of transporting. Various records which will need to be brought to King Thranduil as soon as may be. I have heard that you are reliable, and do fast work."

"Aye," said Bard. "That is true."

"Excellent," said Bain. "Here are the necessary documents. You may send your bill by runner; we will pay whatever you ask. Here is an advance." He handed Bard a small purse of silver coins, more than enough to pay for a rush delivery. And it was only the advance.

Bain turned to the door, but paused before opening it. He looked at Bard without malice or spite, but with pity. "I know my sister has made a sort of pet of you, and you have been very kind to her, and I thank you for that. But she is very young, Bard. A good girl, but so very young. I wish that you would remember that, even if she will not."

Bard could not answer.

"Well, goodbye, Bard," said Bain. He held out his hand and, after a moment's indecision, Bard shook it. Then Bain was gone.

Da let out a roaring snort from his bed upstairs, and Bard flinched. Then he sat back down at the table, and finished his meager meal.


	6. Chapter 6

One morning, Grethe woke to see a crack in her wall which had not been there before.

She rose from her bed and dressed. Woolen stockings and a clean white shift; stays and hip roll, two petticoats and her green wool skirt, dark red bodice and the stomacher with ribbon embroidery. Winter would be here soon, and it was cold out, so she wore a shawl and her thickest boots.

Over breakfast, she told Papa of the new crack.

"We'd best have someone in to see to it," he said. "They'll want to check the foundations straightaway. Mother, would you engage a workman for the afternoon? Bain and I will need to lock ourselves in the study after breakfast; we must finish checking the Master's new levy before it goes into effect next week, and there seem to be some holes in it that want plugging. He always wants to rush these things through."

"I'll see to it, dear," said Ma.

Grethe felt a thrill in her stomach. Her whole family had seemed to act in concert the last two months, preventing her being out of the house alone. With Papa and Bain sequestered upstairs, and Mama busy with the workman, she could slip away to see Bard. Before leaving the house, she ran upstairs for her yellow silk hair ribbon.

Grethe feared that if she stopped to kiss Mama goodbye, she'd be given a chore and never get away, and so she waited till Mama was busy writing the summons for the workman, wrapped herself up tight in her cloak and muff, and darted out of the house like a thief.

Bard was not at the loading dock when Grethe reached it. She asked Sorgen the Docksmaster where Bard had gone, and when he might return.

"Can't say, Miss," said Sorgen, his eyes twinkling. "Went acrost the Lake early this morning and didna say what his business is. If'n ye need a strong young lad to row ye back, ye need only ask, Miss." His shaggy white beard twitched, which meant he was smiling underneath it.

"No, I'll wait," said Grethe. "Thank you, Sorgen."

"As it's so cold out, Miss," said Sorgen, "Mebbe ye'd ruther wait indoors. The Missus has a rare roarin' fire this frosty day, and would happily share it, if ye like."

"Thank you, I will," said Grethe. She went into Sorgen's house beside the dock. She had been in here several times over the previous two years, for it was sometimes a long wait for Bard to show up at the loading dock. Grethe liked Mistress Sally. Sally Ague, they called her, for she was the closest thing any in the docks district had to a doctor.

"An' how's yer goodly parents doin', Miss?" asked Sally in greeting, not rising from her seat by the fire where she continually stirred the contents of a small iron kettle.

"Very well, Sally, thank you."

"An' yer brother, he's well? Engaged, I heard he was, to the Master's own niece."

"That's right," said Grethe, pulling up a stool across from Sally. There was always something to be done in Sally's neat small house; Grethe lifted a basket of wool into her lap and began picking out the trash, flicking burrs and twigs into the fire where they burned into ash. "The wedding will be in the Spring."

"Cor, that's a long handfast," marveled Sally. "Young folks orter marry young and quick, afore they lose the taste for it." She chuckled bawdily.

"They wanted to wait until they'd a house built, and that can't be completed until the ice is off the Lake."

"And why can't they live in a house what's already built?" grumbled Sally. "Or in yer own Da's house, humble though it may be? No sense in waitin', I say, for ye never kin tell what'll come yer way in a season."

Grethe smiled and shrugged.

"I en't seen ye here in some time. Come here lookin' for Bard, I suppose?" Sally went on slyly.

"And to visit with you, of course," said Grethe, working a dead tick from the wool. Sally laughed lustily at this, till her laughing brought on a cough. She spit a glob of something into the fire, where it hissed and popped.

"I've known Bard since he was a wee thing," she said reminiscently. "He allus was too serious, 'thout ever a rest from his hardships. Shame, what happened to his Ma. And his Da, fer that matter. Rancid Borin used ter be a mighty fine-lookin' feller. When he was in trade, he'd go about the walks in broidered breeches and crack every heart along the way. I was powerful envious o' his wife. Sindra, that is, the first one."

"Who died of a broken heart," Grethe murmured, repeating what she'd heard in rumor.

But Sally snorted derisively at this. "Sindra died of an infection in her lungs," she said. "It's Borin died of a broken heart, my lass; been dyin' o' one for the last thirty years. He jist ain't been dumped in the Lake yet fer the fish t'eat."

They worked on. Sally began shredding dried herbs to add to her pot, naming each one for Grethe's benefit.

"Bard figgered me up a song fer my remedies," she mentioned, tossing a handful of powdered gooserag into the pot.

_"Orry-root for stomach ills,_

_Gelica for lungs._

_Fairoak-root a throatache kills,_

_or lovage for the very young._

_._

_Centaury for easing sprains,_

_lilies and leeks for burns._

_Laurel or feywort for labor pains,_

_Sansy a breach-birth turns._

_._

_Arnica and comfrey for wounds,_

_mugwort and rue for blight._

_Pepper and saffron a broken heart soothes,_

_wild lettuce or squill improve sight."_

Her voice was cracked and unlovely, but there was a pretty cadence to the tune which Grethe liked, and she found herself humming and tapping her foot to keep time while Sally went on down a long list of roots and leaves, ointments and teas to remove illness and restore health.

When she finished, Grethe made her start all over again and teach her how it went. Grethe's voice, though young and unwavering, was also distinctly out of tune, and they both laughed to hear it. It was halfway through their third repetition of the remedy song that Grethe chanced to look back at the door, and saw Bard standing there blocking out all the light, his face drawn tight as if he had a pain.

"Bard!" cried Grethe, dropping her basket of wool and springing to her feet. "Thank-you-for-sharing-your-fire-and-goodbye," she said, stooping to kiss Sally's wrinkled cheek. She rushed toward Bard with a smile.

Bard stepped back quickly.

The look on his face was one she'd not seen in a long while, as cagey and cautious as the very first time they'd met. He must be sore that she'd not come to see him in two months. The sooner they were sitting in his boat on the lake, the sooner she could explain matters. She shrugged on her cloak and slipped her hands into her warm fur muff, and led the way outside.

"Where are you tied up?" she asked, looking around.

"Pardon for makin' you wait so long," said Bard, not answering. "I haven't got time to go boating today. I wish Sorgen'd said as much, for I did tell him I'd be busy."

Grethe's heart sank. She might not get another chance to slip away from her family for some time.

"Can you not row me back, at least?" she asked.

"I'd best not, Miss, begging your pardon," said Bard.

Grethe's whole face and neck flamed red. "You'd best not...Miss?" she repeated, not at all quietly. "_What did you call me?_"

Bard glanced around nervously, for one or two dockworkers had turned at the sound of Grethe's voice.

"You'll row me back to my house and _like it_," Grethe hissed, glaring. "And on the way, you'll tell me what strange plants you ate on the mainland, to make you act so odd." She spotted his ketch, moored a few docks down, and stomped over to it. She was an old hand now at getting into and out of a rocking boat without assistance, and settled herself in the prow without waiting to see if Bard had followed her.

* * *

Bard did follow, and dropped into the boat with a leaden feeling in the pit of his belly. He'd meant to back away from her a bit, and talk to her like he might talk to any rich lass who stumbled into the docks district. Not that any ever did, or that Bard ever talked to rich lasses other than Grethe. But he knew how the other denizens of the docks district talked to Grethe, and he'd tried to emulate them. Barely got one sentence out before she lashed out like a polecat, too. Did she always get her own way?

The answer to that, of course, was yes.

He cast off and rowed steadily away from the pier, then turned the boat toward the southeast. He felt rather than saw Grethe's eyes narrow, as well they might; for he was taking her home the short way, as he'd never done once before, not even when he was busiest. The lake was rough, though it'd been smooth as glass when he tied up not long ago. There was no wind to account for it, either. Bard had to work hard to keep the boat moving steadily, to spare Grethe the worst bumps and jars from the choppy waves.

"I'm sorry I haven't come round," said Grethe. "You must be very angry. I did try, only my family's clung to me like leeches and I couldn't get away till now."

"P'raps ye'd better do as they want," grunted Bard, "and not come round again."

Grethe threw her muff at him. Bard spat out a rabbit hair and kept doggedly rowing.

"You know I would have come if I could, Bard," she said. "You must know that. I'll try harder next time, I promise I will—"

"I know ye'd ha' come," he said quietly. "Ye shouldn't."

"And why not?" she choked out, twisting her hands together. Bard paused in his rowing and tossed her muff back to her. She let it slide down her lap and lie at her feet without picking it up.

_She's a good girl, but so very young. I wish that you would remember that, even if she will not_.

Bard couldn't speak. Grethe folded her arms, leaned back and glared at him. Soon Southpier was in view, bustling with more activity than usual. Grethe blanched when she looked over her shoulder and saw it so close.

"Have you nothing to say?" she whispered.

"You're just a young lass," Bard said hoarsely. "You should be at home."

"I see." Grethe's voice wavered.

Anything else she might have said was cut off by shouts from the pier. Hamish the liveried docktender was waving his hands over his head, to get their attention. Bard rowed faster. He hoped he wasn't about to be dragged off to the pillory for kidnapping, but you never could tell with angry mobs. The pier was utter confusion, everyone yelling and running about. Hamish dashed onto the pier to help Grethe out of the boat, not seeming even to notice Bard.

Why was the Master standing on the boardwalk, watching the scene of confusion? Why was his sister there, and his niece? Why was the niece crying like her heart'd been broken?

The Master came forward with a sorrowful expression pasted onto his face, and took Grethe's hand in both his own. He spoke a few words to her, and she leapt away from him, shaking her head. She ran into the crowd and was lost to view.

"Hamish!" Bard called. "What's happened?"

The servant looked back at Bard, in too much distress even for his usual glance of suspicion and dislike.

"Master Scribe's house collapsed," he cried over his shoulder, already moving off after Grethe, "with all the family trapped inside."

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading. Comments? Criticism? Predictions? Predilections? Let me know in a review!_


	7. Chapter 7

Grethe did not remember what happened after the Master told her, in a wobbly voice, that her house had fallen into the lake with her family still inside. She was later told that she had run toward the site, and that Hamish had grabbed her arm just in time to keep her from falling into the churning, bubbling rubble. They were down there. Somewhere in that roiling cauldron was Mama, and Papa, and her own dear Bain. Bain could hold his breath longer than anyone Grethe knew. Perhaps he would bob to the surface in a minute, scared and hurt but alive.

"You stayed on the walk for two hours," Mistress Grundel informed her later. "If any dared try to move you, you screamed and struck. I'm afraid you've taken cold, sweet."

"I was waiting for Bain to come back up," said Grethe numbly. At the sound of his name, Lisette began to sob again, flinging herself in Grethe's lap.

Mistress Grundel tactfully transferred her daughter to her own lap and sat patting her hair.

"There, there, Lizzie, there now."

Grethe did not cry. She thought that if she cried she might feel better. Then again, she might feel worse, or the same. So she just sat quietly. When anyone spoke to her, she gazed at them blindly. She did not eat.

On the second day, after she had failed to get more than an hour's sleep at a time in Lisette's bed, Mistress Grundel took her aside.

"Of course you'll stay with me and Lizzie," she said kindly. "But there's...oh, dear. How shall I say it?"

Grethe looked at her hands and waited.

"Your finances are not well," Mistress Grundel said delicately. "You've lost everything."

Why was she saying this? Of course Grethe had lost everything. How could she possibly fail to perceive that?

_Bain'll come up, he must come back up..._

"Very little of it will be recoverable, I'm sorry to say. His books were your father's most valuable property, and...well, you know how fragile such things are. They will be quite worthless, even if they can be got back from the Lake."

"Yes," said Grethe. Then, remembering something through her fog of misery, "P-Papa told me he had some books of rare worth, which he stored in the Treasury. If I sold those, couldn't I have enough to live on?"

"Well…" said Mistress Grundel. "Oh, dear. My poor sweet girl, the difficulty is that the collapse caused a great deal of damage to the town. The shockwaves might have weakened other foundations. It was your father's duty to ensure his own foundations were firm, and you know the legality of it is that...is that…"

"The Master won't give me my father's books," said Grethe, comprehending. Mistress Grundel sighed.

"Exactly so," she said, seeming relieved that Grethe had understood so quickly. "The sale of the books will pay for fortifications under the whole town. But as I said, of course you may stay with me until a suitable marriage can be arranged. I've already begun making inquiries on your behalf and I'm happy to say that your troubles will soon be at an end, my sweet."

"What do you mean?"

"My brother, the Master, regrets most keenly that the law prevents you having the proceeds from your father's books, but of course he has the good of the town to think of. But he does not wish to leave you with nothing. My dear Grethe, he has offered to marry you himself."

* * *

Was it only two months ago—three?—when Bard had promised that if aught changed, he would ask Grethe if she'd meant it when she said that she would have him? He had known that nothing would ever come of it, for how could his fortunes ever right themselves?

It had never occurred to him that such a change might slant both ways.

Bard had never been one for frequenting taverns, but in the evenings following the tragedy, when all his work was done and the _Sindra_ tied up outside, he would lurk in the corner of The Dormer and listen to the chatter.

"Master's left the wee lass with not a ha'penny," said one codger over the foam of his pint. "Pulled the law on her."

"A law her own clot-head Da wrote," sneered Cidery Pummas. "An' serve 'im right, too!"

"Eh, be that the lass's fault?" threw in old Sorgen from the other side of the room. "She's as nice a lass as she is bonny. It's a fell shame what Masterbones is fixin' to do to her."

Bard's heart hammered under his coat.

"What's Masterbones fixin'?" asked Pummas, an eager glint in his eye. Bard leaned forward to hear.

"What I heard from Hamish down south-a-ways, who heard it from the Master's own valet, is that the law mighter protected Miss Grethe, only he'd ruther protect 'er hisself."

"I bet he would," roared someone behind Sorgen.

"Aye," sighed Sorgen sadly, "she'll marry 'im, see if she don't, with it all fixed so she has to or starve. An' her too good for a man o' three times his worth. The world is full o' shit, friends, an' it lands on all alike."

"Lands on us more than her," put in the drunken codger.

"Well," said Pummas scathingly, "let 'er marry the Master, an' see how she likes it. Swimming in silks and jools, she'll be, and all for a very reasonable cost."

"An' what cost is that, Pummy?" shouted a fellow with a serving-girl in his lap.

"Why, there's but one reason a man'd take a wife half his age," laughed Pummas. Bard stood up quickly, knocking his stool back. In the din, no one noticed. "Who wants to saddle up a nag when ye kin ride a filly bare?" He stood up and began thrusting his hips obscenely against the drunken codger beside him. "If anyone kin get that cold fish o' the Master's to flop on a line, it's wee Grethe. An' if she gets tired o' fishin for his sardine, I got a trout she might try—"

Pummas was flying over the trestle table and into the fireplace before he even realized Bard had struck him. Bard vaulted over the table and lay into the man blindly, till his fist was bloody and the teeth were loose in Pummas's head. Dimly he was conscious of someone plucking at his arm on every upswing, but he did not stop beating the prone and bleeding man until Sorgen upended a whole bucket of steaming urine over his head. Bard leapt to his feet and spun around, teeth bared, to face a roomful of riled, well-sauced men standing silently with their hands on their knives.

"Come, now, Bard," Sorgen muttered, taking Bard by the shoulder and hustling him out the door. "Come along, ye stink of piss. Ye'd better get those clothes off, and a bite of stew in you. Time to sober up."

"I've not been drinking," said Bard through clenched teeth.

"Then what were ye thinkin', ye great lout?" said Sorgen. "Pickin' fights in broad public an' all… I allus took ye fer more sensible than that, lad. I heard what he was sayin', an' if he'd gone on a mite longer I'd ha' tossed the bucket o' piss in his face. He'd ha' been shamed, and everyone'd ha' had a good laugh, if I'd ha' done it. But you, Bard, you… Ye'd best watch behind yer back for a while, lad, fer all it pains me to have to say. I did think you'd more sense."

Sorgen steered Bard to his own front door. "Sal'll gut me an' you both if I let you in smellin' like that, laddie, so ye'd best strip t'yer skivs out here. There's an empty bucket ye kin fill with Lake water, and cram yer clothes in to soak. Mind ye don't use the rainbarrel, or we'll ha' naught to drink but ale till next storm." He went inside.

Bard stood shivering in the cold and the dark. Then he did as Sorgen had said, and stooped to dip a large wooden bucket in the lake. He stripped out of his coat and boots and tunic and shirt and breeches, dropped them all in the bucket, and went into the house.

"Ye poor, soddin' fool," Sal clucked, draping a blanket on Bard's bare shoulders. "Sorgen told me what ye did. Ye know she's not your'n, lad."

"Aye," said Bard, shivering. "I do know."

But there were things you could change, and things you couldn't; and Bard had made a promise.

* * *

When several days after the tragedy Grethe finally woke from her hollow dream-state, she wanted more than anything to cry. But she could never be alone to do it, and she couldn't bring herself to cry in front of Lisette or Mistress Grundel.

And the Master wanted to marry her. It was all Mistress Grundel ever talked about.

"He's not so very much older than Bain...er, would have been," she said. Lisette ran out of the room, her face in her handkerchief. Grethe smoothed the skirt of her borrowed dress and pretended to be deaf while Mistress Grundel detailed an endless list of what she must have thought were the Master's virtues.

"...Provide for you, Grethe, and well." She seemed to be nearing the end of the list. "And you must realize, my dear, that you are unlikely to have any other suitable offers. It is really very good of my brother to do this for you."

Grethe let her eyes drift to the window and stared blankly at the empty gray Lake. There was only one boat on the water now: a tiny ketch, little more than a black speck on the water.

"You should not leave him waiting, but should answer as soon as may be. You know he was a great friend of your father's, dear."

The boat was turning toward Southpier, drawing near enough for her to begin to make out its details. Its sole occupant was someone tall and black-haired and rough.

"I think I may say that your father, rest his soul, would have been overjoyed at the union."

"Pardon me," said Grethe, rising quickly. "I feel ill."

"Of course, dear," said Mistress Grundel. "Why don't you go and have a lie-down, and I'll have Marta bring you some chamomile."

Grethe walked up the stairs to Lisette's room. Lisette was sleeping on top of her covers, her fist clenched around a wrinkled and tear-stained letter.

Grethe quietly unlaced her bodice and stepped out of her borrowed skirt. She pulled her own clothes from Lisette's wardrobe where they sat neatly folded, and began to dress herself. On went the woolen stockings and chemise—the boots—stays and hip roll—two petticoats and green skirt—dark red bodice—shawl, cloak, fur muff. Last of all Grethe tied her yellow ribbon around the knot of her hair, closed the door softly behind her, and slipped silently down the stairs and through the front door. She walked down the front path to the gate, where the gatekeeper was assiduously denying someone entrance.

"What is this?" she asked.

"It's only Mad Bard, here to beg," replied the gatekeeper, bowing slightly. "Will you be wishing an escort, Miss? As you see the Lake has yielded an unsavory catch today."

"Grethe," Bard said through the bars of the gate. "I promised that if aught should change, I would come to you and ask if what you said that day was true, and I'm here to ask it."

"If you like, Miss," said the gatekeeper, "I can call the mastersmen. The scoundrel will not come inside these gates while I stand watch."

"If you'll not let him in, then you must let me out," said Grethe coldly.

Too surprised to prevent her, the gatekeeper watched dumbly as Grethe pushed past him and through the gate. Bard had tied his boat to Mistress Grundel's own private dock; it was so small it was almost lost to view beside the larger craft there moored. Grethe walked over to it and climbed awkwardly down the ladder, her arms and legs feeling stiff. Bard dropped lightly in a moment later, and cast off. Behind them, the gatekeeper was running back toward the house yelling, his hand on his wig.

"Row faster, Bard," said Grethe quietly, without looking back again.

* * *

They had only a short time to talk; Bard knew that once Grethe's flight had been made known, he would be a hunted man. But some things must be said, and quickly. Before they reached the dock.

"Does the Master really want to marry you?" Bard asked.

"Yes," said Grethe.

"And will ye not change your mind about him?"

Grethe's only answer was a scowl of disgust.

"Can ye not find some lad better suited to ye in life?"

"You are perfectly suited to me in every way," Grethe said, "or at least I thought you were, before you started asking foolish questions."

"I only want to be sure, lass," Bard said gently. "Ye've lost everything ye ever had, and I'll not have ye throw your life away on me because you're desperate."

"If you turn me away now," said Grethe, "I will have lost everything."

"I'll not turn ye away," Bard said. "If you're sure, then we must act quickly. The Master'll have me in a cage as soon as he hears of this. I dare not put down at a clerk, but we can have a handfasting if we can rustle up two witnesses."

"That will be fine," said Grethe. Bard watched her face as he rowed. He'd never imagined she could look like this, with jaw set and eyes so stony. He wanted to reach out and touch her cheek, but didn't dare; and besides, he could not afford to stop rowing.

Bard did not tie up at a dock, but pulled his ketch alongside a deserted bit of boardwalk and helped Grethe onto it. He looped the boat's rope around a rotted piling and climbed up after her, and they ran as quietly as they could toward Sorgen and Sally Ague's house. Down every alleyway he heard shouting, and stomping boots. He hoped their pursuers would go to his house first.

Bard pounded on the door for what seemed an age before Sally finally opened it.

"What d'ye mean by—" she gasped, but Bard pushed Grethe past Sally into the house, and darted in after her.

"We want to be married," Bard said quickly. "Will you and Sorgen stand witness?"

Sally gaped, a brown wad of savvyroot visible in her cheek. Sorgen came bursting through the front door.

"Sal," he wheezed, latching it tight behind him, "it's all over town our Bard's just kidnapped—" He saw Bard standing with Grethe, and blinked, and looked as if he might faint, and then squinted at them just to be sure his first glimpse hadn't lied to him. "'Ere, Miss, are you kidnapped or what?"

"Bard says they want to be married," said Sally helplessly, "and will we stand witness?"

"Cor," said Sorgen. "Miss Grethe, is this all as Sal says, or 'as she been at the herb again?"

Grethe lifted her chin defiantly. "It is true," she said. "The quicker the better, if you please."

"Well, I allus did say short engagements were best," Sally averred. "All righty, then, take hands, and say what I say."

Grethe took Bard's hands in hers before he even had time to be ashamed of their roughness, and the dirt under the nails. She looked up into his eyes steadily.

"Are you quite sure, Grethe?" he asked again. She squeezed his fingers sternly.

"If you ask me one more time if I'm sure," she said, "I will never speak to you again, Bard, and our next fifty years together will be horrible. Now hush and let me marry you." Sally uttered the brief rite for them to repeat.

"Bard, I marry you in good faith, to be your wife and share your fate."

A face looked in through the front window and shouts sounded on the boardwalk outside. There was a jolt of violent pounding on the door.

"Grethe, I marry you in good faith—" Bard said, as the door flew off its hinges, and three mastersmen burst into the room.

"—to be your husband and share your fate," he finished in a rush, and then their hands were wrenched apart, and a knee in his gut made him double over, all the breath blown out of him.

"Let him go! Stop that at once!" Grethe shouted. Bard reflected, as he was dragged bodily from the house, that his wife had a good pair o' lungs on her, at that.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! What do you think of this turn of events?_

_A/N 2.0: I should have mentioned sooner, but Grethe's name is pronounced "Gretta"._


	8. Chapter 8

One of the mastersmen stood before Grethe and bowed to her.

"Be not afeared, Miss," he said. "We're come to escort you back to your home. Have you been harmed by that...that…"

"Husband?" supplied Grethe. "No, I have not been harmed by my husband, thank you for asking. I am sorry you came all this way for nothing."

The mastersman's jaw dropped. "I don't rightly understand, Miss," he said stupidly.

"You have just interrupted our wedding. I have not been kidnapped, and I would be much obliged if you would return my bridegroom to me at once."

"Well, I…" The poor lad looked behind him for backup, but both his companions were still trying to subdue Bard.

"Immediately!" she barked.

He went to the door and shouted to someone Grethe could not see, "Captain! The Miss says she ain't been kidnapped at all!"

There were additional boots on the boardwalk, and the captain walked in and bowed smartly to Grethe.

"You say you've not been kidnapped?" he said.

"I have not been kidnapped," said Grethe, gritting her teeth and wishing for patience.

"Well, Miss, we've still got to take him in. He beat a man quite severely, you know, in a room full of witnesses, just two nights ago."

"Then why was he not arrested two nights ago?" demanded Grethe.

"Sorry, Miss. Law's the law."

"Young Bard was defending his wife's honor," Sorgen put in. "Defense of a wife's honor is due cause under the law."

The captain looked perplexed.

"Er, they weren't married two nights ago," supplied his subordinate.

"Right, then," said the captain. He bowed once more to Grethe, turned on his heel, and left.

"Don't ye worry, Mistress Grethe," said Sorgen reassuringly. "He'll not be kept more than a night for just a beating, since Pummas didn't lose the use of his body, or get addled in the head. Now if he'd killed the man..."

"But he didn't," said Sally. "An' it's a hard thing for newlyweds to spend their weddin' night apart." She looked at Sorgen significantly. He sighed, and slumped his shoulders, and kissed Sal's cheek.

"I'll see what I can do fer the idiot," he said, ducking back out through the door.

* * *

"Now ye come along in an' warm yerself, Mistress Grethe," said Sal, taking Grethe's cloak from her and leading her to a stool at the scarred wooden table." She caught sight of Grethe's face. "An' don't fuss yerself, Mistress; my Sorgen'll have Bard out, never fear."

"What was it that happened, exactly, between Bard and, er...the gentleman who received the beating?" asked Grethe, putting her booted feet nearer the fire. She'd not felt warm since...since…

"Ah, well, set yerself a spell and I'll tell ye," said Sally comfortably, pulling things from different cupboards: a wooden bowl and spoon, a cannister of salt, a horn cup which she dipped into the rain-barrel beside the front door. She ladled a good dollop of mush into the bowl from a covered iron pot keeping warm on the hearth, and laid it all before Grethe. She settled her own bulk onto the stool opposite Grethe before continuing.

"Pummas is a louty fellow, an' that's a fact everyone knows," she said. "Now after your poor folks went to the sunny green land, Bard took to sittin' in taverns, listenin' fer news. An' Cidery Pummas was busy livin' up to his name, an' spouted off some nonsense about the morals of the rich, an' what with one thing and another he didn't get a chance to throw more than an insult or two yer way before Bard'd jumped clear acrost the table and smashed his face for 'im. He gave him a right beating, too," she said with satisfaction. "I saw 'im yesterday an' his face is a picture. Now ye may not have call to have learnt before this but ye should know it now, for ye've gone an' stuck yerself to the lad for good an' ill: Bard ain't so well liked around here that he can hit anyone he pleases without there'll be trouble."

"I am aware he isn't...isn't popular," said Grethe.

"Don't get me wrong, lass, it's better for him now than when he was a bairn, for he does good work for little pay, an' he's trusty at it, and he keeps his head down, so most people don't notice him much. And there's those who remember how his Da fell to ruin, and thought the whole thing was mighty suspicious, and would give Bard a hand up now an' then, if only he'd take it. But ye should know it never did go over well, him boatin' you around the Lake so much. There's some who'll always hate the rich, and with good reason, p'raps; an' they're the ones say Bard puts on airs and acts too high an' mighty; an' associating wi' ye only made 'em think it more. That'll get worse, now ye've up and marrit him. Now, I only say this so ye know the way of things, lass, and not because I think it's right."

Grethe was taken aback; it had never occurred to her that she might be an unsavory association for Bard, as well as the other way round. "Have I been selfish, then?" she asked, distressed.

"It's up to you to judge that," said Sally, patting Grethe's trembling hand. "But I've known Bard a good long time, and nursed him at my own teat more than once when he was wee, an' I kin tell ye with a ring o' truth that he'll have thought o' all this, an' weighed the good agin' the bad; and if he ended by choosin' to marry ye, it's a sure thing he had his own good reasons for it."

Sally picked up Grethe's empty dish and brought it over to a small tub of water.

"I will say, an' don't take it amiss, but things will go easier for Bard and fer yourself if ye try to fergit ye was ever a fine lady, Mistress. I've known ye two years now, an' I think ye're not too proud to do what needs doin', if ye follow me."

"Yes, of course," said Grethe, flushing slightly. She went to stand beside Sally, and took up a rag to dry the cleaned dishes Sally handed to her. This accomplished, they sat by the fire, and Sally showed her how to pinch the leaves off of branches of spike cherry without harming the berries or impaling herself on the thorns.

"Now, Mistress, it's time fer me to ask ye what mebbe it's not my place to ask," said Sally unself-consciously. "Have you and Bard marrit in all but handfast, before now?"

Grethe thought she meant had they signed papers with a clerk. "No," she answered. "We didn't have time to stop off at the Records Hall, nor dare risk it with the mastersmen after us."

"Begging yer pardon, Mistress," said Sally, "but that's not what I'm askin'. What I mean to say is, has he made hisself yer husband, an' have ye made yerself his wife?"

Grethe stared at her blankly.

"Before ye ran away from that walnut Grundel, did ye p'raps open a window and climb down by moonlight to meet him? Or mebbe before, at yer blessed Da's house, did ye ever leave a servant's door unlocked, for him to come up t'yer room o' nights?"

Grethe's face grew warm. "Certainly not!"

"An' never in his wee boat did he give ye a tickle or two, when no one was watchin'?"

"In full view of the town," said Grethe, her cheeks flaming, "whatever could he have done? We didn't even know we were going to get married until today."

"Well, there's some as don't wait, and there's things ye needn't be marrit to enjoy," said Sally imperturbably. "Am I to take it ye've not done more than kiss an' fondle?"

"We've not kissed once," said Grethe, declining to dignify _fondle_ with a response.

"Ahh," said Sally. "Mmmm." Then, "Well, Mistress, please know I do keep yer sainted Ma in highest regard when I ask, just how much did she ever tell ye 'bout marryin' with a man?"

"That I must make a good match, and that it ought to be with someone I really liked," said Grethe. "She showed me how to run a household after I'm married, and I know a good deal about remedies and recipes and rotating the linens and so on. Is that what you mean?"

Sally raised her eyes to the heavens and sighed. "Take up this fresh basket o' spike cherry, lass, an' listen well, an' we'll see if we can't get ye caught up afore the husbands get back."

* * *

The Cage was as unpleasant a place as any in Laketown, comprised of a row of cells no bigger than a dog's crate each, made up of three walls with the fourth replaced by an iron gridwork and facing onto the Lake. A boardwalk allowed anyone who pleased to stand around goggling at any offenders who had transgressed badly enough to earn a stay in the Cage, and throw garbage or insults. It also allowed friends to come offer succor to the incarcerated.

"Ye daft fool," Sorgen was saying conversationally, passing his leathern flask through the bars. "Why didn't ye just come quietly? I could ha' got ye out if ye'd not drawn blood. Now ye'll be stuck here till the morn, at least, and yer pretty little wife all lonesome back at home. Whatever possessed ye?"

Bard thought of what Grethe must be thinking of him, and took a bigger swallow from the flask than he intended.

"I'm a-goin' to the Records Hall now, to get the papers fer the weddin'. Try to keep outer trouble till I get back, lad."

Sorgen left, and the wind he'd been blocking off the Lake swept into Bard's cell, carrying with it the ripe smell of sewage. He would be shivering before the sun was down, and a whole night still to get through.

Not that he didn't have company. First a group of snot-nosed lads in warm coats came by to pick their noses and gape at Bard. Then their older brothers showed up with buckets of the fish entrails commonly used as bait. They flung fistfuls of this through the bars at Bard's head. He was glad that Grethe was not here to see this, and wondered again what she might be thinking of him. Was she furious with him for being arrested? Was she, even now, hearing the story of the beating he'd given Pummas, and regretting her choice of a husband? Bard did not want to be a shame to her, nor a burden. He should have waited longer. Perhaps, if she'd had a chance to grieve properly, she would have been thinking more clearly.

It was true that she didn't want to marry the Master, but someone handsome and middle-class might yet offer for her hand once the Master backed down, and she would repent of attaching herself permanently to Bard. Hunger did a lot to provide perspective, and Bard doubted Grethe had been hungry a day in her life. She could not know what marriage to him would mean. Would she hate him for failing to warn her, to prepare her? Bard would spare her the lifetime of regret, if he could. If only he hadn't rushed things so. It wasn't decent, the way he'd come to her barely a week after she'd lost her family and her wealth and her freedom.

He spent the long night shivering in his cramped cell, searching for a way to free Grethe from the decision she'd made in haste. Of course he could simply decline to sign the marital contract; but her situation would be just as bad as it had been when she'd walked out of Mistress Grundel's front door, for it was clear that the Master would not be granting her time to grieve any more than Bard had. She did not want the Master, and she could not put him off forever. How could Bard help her in the short run without dooming her in the long? He tried to remember the exact wording of the marital contract. His Da had taught him his letters with one, it being the only written thing in the house other than shipping receipts. But Bard had not looked at one lately. Were the terms still the same now as they'd been last time Rancid Borin made a match?

Bard woke a little after sunrise, when Sorgen chucked a quill at his head, then slid a bottle of ink and a sheet of vellum through the bars of the cell.

Bard read through the marital contract quickly, and sighed in relief. The terms were the same as he remembered. His half-formed plan began to solidify: he could sign it now, give Grethe some protection from the Master, and still leave her free to marry someone better if she changed her mind within the year. It was the best he could do for her.

"Well, don't just sit there drooling at it," said Sorgen impatiently. "Make yer mark, boy. D'ye know what I had to do to get this? Percy took a fair bit o' persuading to give it up, I kin tell ye, and he said if it ain't back on his desk in an hour he won't file it for nothin'."

Bard signed his name to the contract.

"I'll just nip this round home and bring it back to Percy, and then I'll have to head to the docks, for I've missed two hours' work already, and that clothead Goffried'll jumble up the books if I leave him at my post much longer. Keep yer spirits up, lad." And he was gone.

The customary town children came by on their way to school, with breakfast still smeared on their faces, and hurled slurs through the bars. Then their mothers did the same, on their way to do the day's shopping. Around noon, the latest gaggle of housewives looked down the boardwalk and suddenly hurried off, their faces turned away from someone behind them. Bard hoped it was the Cagemaster, come to let him out, and he was partly right.

"I've a mind to let you rot in there forever," said the Master in a thoroughly disgusted tone. "Having plagued this town for years, you've now plucked one of Laketown's freshest buds and thrown it to the pigs. I'm ashamed even to see your face."

"Then don't," said Bard before he could bite his tongue. The Master looked pained.

"That lackwit Recordkeeper filed your marital contract this very hour," he said, pinching his lips around the words. "It would have been better for all if he had had the presence of mind to burn it, but I suppose it cannot be undone now. And as Pummas lost no use of his body as a result of the beating you gave him, I'm sorry to say that we have no longer any right to keep you locked away." He gestured to the Cagemaster, who fumbled on a ring of keys until he found the one to open Bard's cell. Freed of his cramped quarters, Bard stretched gratefully. A child would have found that tiny cell confining; to someone of Bard's dimensions it was nothing less than torture, and his aching legs and back protested his every movement.

"I don't even like to think of what you must have done to make the sorry thing agree to this," said the Master. "I can but assume she had no choice. I wonder if she'll start showing soon, or if she's one of those lucky lasses who can keep her figure through the whole of a quickening. I cannot say I look forward to meeting your bastard; let us pray it takes after its mother."

Bard had not even had time to lunge for the Master before two mastersmen had gripped him by the arms, and a third around the neck.

"Oh, I know, I know," said the Master mockingly, "dishonor to one's wife is indeed due cause for retribution. And retribution there will be, O Stinking Son of Girion. Harry, hold him." Bard felt his head wrenched back, so that he was looking up at the sky, and then a pain exploded in his belly and radiated out through the extremes if his body. Held upright by three men, he could not even double over in his pain; with his head pulled back, he could not see it happening. The Cagemaster drove the blunt end of a wooden bat into his gut again and again, until Bard's legs were reflexively curled tight to his chest, his whole weight supported by the mastersmen, who struggled to hold him through the violent spasms wracking his body. Finally his head was released, and the Master took the club from the Cagemaster and hit Bard against the side of the head with the handle.

Bard was dragged, semi-conscious, through the town and dumped on the front stoop of his house. He lay there, too dizzy to move or think. But eventually the spasms shuddered to a halt, and he was left with a pulsating glow of pain deep in his belly that made it impossible for him to straighten his legs away from his body. All he could do was drag himself hand-over-hand into his house. The side of his head where the Master had clubbed him felt hot and sticky, and his vision shifted and blurred when he tried to focus on anything. He tried to feel the area with his hand, but with the contact a wave of nausea overcame him, and the ensuing dry-heaves that rippled through his battered abdomen left him cold and sweating and nearing unconsciousness.

Bard's last thought, in the seconds before darkness overtook him, was that it was a damned good thing the Master didn't know which end of a bat to hold.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading, and for your lovely reviews!_


	9. Chapter 9

Grethe, having slept in her clothes by the banked fire in Sally Ague's downstairs room, woke at the sound of the woman stirring upstairs. She stumbled to her feet, clutching her shawl around her shoulders, and helped Sally down the last few steps of the ladder. Then Sally taught her how to make porridge and how to keep a fire's heat even and steady, and how to fold up her skirts so they wouldn't dangle in the embers while she bent over the pot to stir the mush. But all Grethe thought of the whole time was Bard, and how he was faring. The Cages were a cold and lonesome place, and mortifying to be caught in. She wished she could be there to keep him company; but Sally had explained to her that until the marital contract was signed and filed she had better keep out of sight. No use tempting trouble.

Sorgen finally came in while Grethe and Sally were eating breakfast. Sally spooned him a bowl of porridge, and he sat down to eat it with great snuffles of enjoyment.

"Ah, that's a fine batch, Sal my girl," Sorgen said gruffly. "Mistress Grethe, I've got the contract; all it wants is your mark and Sal's, and I kin get it to Percy to file away, an' then it won't matter how the Master kicks and screams, ye'll be married for good. An' how was yer night's sleep?"

"Very well, thank you," Grethe lied absently, snatching the document from Sorgen's fingers and angling it toward the light from the window to read over. There at the bottom, above Sorgen's blocky signature, was the single name _Bard_.

The sight of it made her stomach leap and bound. Bard had held a pen in his hand, had dipped it in ink and written this name here, each gesture hard proof that he had not reconsidered during his long night in the Cages, that he still wanted her despite the turmoil she had already brought into his life. She traced her fingers over each letter, inelegant but carefully formed. He had a plain and honest hand.

"Pen," Grethe demanded breathlessly. Sally handed her a quill and a bottle of walnut ink, and Grethe dashed out her signature with shaking hands. Then Sally signed on the remaining line while Sorgen bolted down the rest of his food. He waited for it to dry, then folded it carefully in thirds and slid it into his document satchel.

"He was put in the Cages midday, so don't look for him before then," he said. "I'll bring this to Percy now." He kissed Sally on the lips, then gravely kissed the middle of Grethe's forehead. "Ye'll make a passing strange pair," he said, "but I won't lie and say I don't foresee a rare bit o' happiness for ye, in spite o' all ye've lost." Then he went out, and Grethe busied herself cleaning up from breakfast while Sally Ague went out to look at a family of coughs.

Midday came and went. After Grethe had eaten a little cold porridge for lunch, she went out to ask Sorgen if he'd seen Bard.

"He's not come for ye yet?" he asked, concern wrinkling his brow. Grethe shook her head. "Well, the contract was stamped and filed this morning, and I had the Cagemaster's assurance the prisoner'd be let go an hour past noon." He peered up at the sky. "Mm," he said uneasily. "Two hours past, it is."

Grethe felt herself go cold. Well, she reasoned, now that the contract was signed and filed, she was free to show her face again. She ducked into Sally's house for her cloak, and walked as quickly as she could to the Cages.

Every cell was empty.

Grethe went into the small office adjoining the cells. "Pardon me," she said breathlessly to the Cagemaster, who looked her up and down disdainfully over his desk. "Was Bard let go this afternoon?"

"Does it look like he's still locked up?" he said rudely, turning back to his work. "He was let out hours ago. Try a tavern, miss. Perhaps he's warming his insides with a pint or three."

Grethe spun on her heel and hurried away. If he'd been let go, perhaps he'd just gone straight home for some reason. And even if he wasn't there, perhaps his father might be able to tell her where he'd gone. It was troublesome that she didn't actually know where his house was. But she could guess it would be located in the smelliest part of town, and she could always ask around when she got there.

Forty-five minutes later, Grethe had revised her opinion of the navigability of the sewage district of Laketown, and of the helpfulness of its inhabitants. Most people she approached ignored her, while a few gave her directions that conflicted with reality and led her in circles.

"'E lives in the shingle house wi' a peeling door," one suspicious-looking woman had said before hurrying off, leaving Grethe staring hopelessly around her at a double row of shingle houses with peeling doors.

She should never have gone out alone. She would have to go back to Sally's, and ask for help. At least Sally didn't suspect her of ulterior motives every time she opened her mouth. It was as she was determining this that she noticed the toe of a heavy black boot peeking around a particularly peeling front door.

Grethe ran forward with a cry of alarm. The body attached to the boot was blocking the door, and she had to throw her whole weight at it several times just to open it enough to get in. And there lay Bard, curled on his side, his face crumpled in pain, breathing shallowly. Grethe sank to her knees and looked for injuries. He had a head-wound which gently oozed blood, requiring immediate attention. Grethe looked around for a clean cloth and water but found only a moderately dirty cloth and a palm cup of something pungently alcoholic on the table. They would have to do. She soaked the rag in the foul-smelling swill and dabbed it gently against Bard's temple and prayed he'd wake soon. Grethe recalled a workman who had fallen on his head from the second floor of her old house, and had lain alive-yet-not for three weeks before he finally died.

"Bard," Grethe whispered urgently, "wake up, Bard."

There was no response. He had his arms clenched across his abdomen; had he an injury there she'd missed? There was no blood pooled on the floor around him, but perhaps his clothes had soaked it up.

When Grethe moved his arms away from their position covering his belly, he woke with a scream of pain which stung Grethe's ears and made her stumble backward.

"Grethe," he grunted, his face turning white from the effort this cost him. "S-sorry..." He began shivering violently. Grethe took a moment to note that there was no sign of blood on his clothes; probably no open wounds to his belly, then. That was a small mercy.

"I'm here, now," she said, covering him with the cloak still warm from her body. "I must get you warm."

"N-n-ngh," he protested when she pulled away from him to build up the fire. Luckily there was an ember still glowing under a thick layer of ash, or she'd have had to go out and beg a lit brand from a neighbor. Grethe had a very low opinion of Bard's neighbors, who had been walking past Bard's ajar door all afternoon and done nothing to see that he was all right; she was in no hurry to be asking favors from them.

Once the fire had caught, Grethe knelt by Bard and tried to think of a way to get him closer to the grate. He carried not a spare handful of flesh, but he was tall and broad-shouldered, and far too heavy for her to lift or even drag.

"Can you help me, Bard?" His forehead had broken out in a sweat, and the shivering was getting worse. "I need to get you warm, and I can't move you to the fireplace without help. Can you help me?"

Bard let her drape his arm around her neck, though she could tell that any movement that even remotely jarred his midsection caused him unutterable pain. Then she half-supported, half-dragged him across the floor, and laid him out on the brick hearth with a bag of flour for a pillow. He tried to curl up again, but Grethe did not let him.

"I must see what's happened to you," said Grethe, pulling his rigid arms away from the area. She opened his coat and untucked his shirt, and gasped aloud at what she found.

Bard's whole torso, from mid-rib to well below the navel, was a solid bruise, the pooled blood already blue-black under the skin. It looked as though he'd been trampled by a bull.

_I don't know how to fix this_, she thought helplessly. _But I must_.

"I'm going to make you some tea, Bard," she said, trying to keep her voice calm. But he grabbed her wrist before she could stand up, and held onto her weakly.

"N-no tea," he groaned.

"You need to drink something," she insisted, but he shook his head.

"N-no t-tea in the house," he clarified. "Just w-water."

The water needed to be warm before he could drink it, so she rifled through all the cupboards until she found a sizeable bowl that seemed basically clean. She filled this with rainwater from the barrel out front, and placed it close to the fire. She would have liked to have boiled it, but the only kettle she could find was rusted through.

When the bowl of water was lukewarm, Grethe dipped a dented tin cup into it and held it up to Bard's lips. Most of it trickled down his chin, for he was too weak to hold himself up to drink. Grethe situated herself behind him, so that the curve of her body held him somewhat upright, and held the cup to his lips once more. This time he managed to drink it down, in spluttering sips. After fifteen minutes, she gave him another cupful. Fifteen minutes after that, he was asleep, curled around his brutalized abdomen with his head in her lap.

And now, for the first time since all her world had fallen into the Lake, Grethe allowed herself to cry.

* * *

_A/N: Welcome to any new readers, and thanks for checking out this little story. If you like what you're reading, or have any thoughts at all about it, let me know in a review!_


	10. Chapter 10

Bard woke with a terrible need to urinate. He was warm—that was good, he'd not been warm since summer—and there was a smell of food, with a slightly burnt twinge to it which did nothing to prevent his mouth from flooding with saliva. How long had it been since he'd ate? How long had it been since he woke from sleep to smell food already cooking? And who was cooking it? Had Da gone to bed sober enough to pour a handful of grits in a bowl to cook by the fire overnight?

"Salt...salt…" a distracted female voice said quietly, somewhere out of view, and Bard woke the rest of the way up, remembering.

"I'sin the brown bowl by the window upstairs," he said. There was a stifled shriek of startlement, and pattering feet, and Grethe's head came into view.

"Oh, _Bard_," she half-sobbed, taking his hand and squeezing it. "You haven't said a word in _days_, I thought your _brain_ was touched by _fever_ and you'd been _addled_…"

"How long has it been?"

"Three days since you...since…"

Three days since he'd been beaten worse than ever he'd been beaten in his life. Three days since he'd been married. And what a sorry start he'd made, not that he expected the marriage to last…

Which meant he'd missed three days of work. Bard sat bolt upright, and his whole midsection seized with agonizing cramps. Grethe tried, unsuccessfully, to push him back down. Bard struggled to his feet, cringing involuntarily with every movement. By the time he was standing more or less upright, he was breathless from the effort of not screaming.

Grethe slid her shoulder under Bard's arm. "You shouldn't be standing," she said. "You were very badly hurt."

"I have to pi—make water," he said through clenched teeth. Holding it in was half the cause of his cramps.

"I put a bowl next to you," she said. "You didn't have to get up."

"An' make ye clean it up?" he responded, taking a tentative step. Oh, mercy but that hurt. It made the water slosh inside him so he almost wet himself standing there.

"I've been cleaning it up for days," said Grethe patiently. "You had blood in your urine the first few times, but it came out more clean after that."

To his horror, Bard realized that he was wearing a pair of Da's ancient breeches, the ones too riddled with holes to be used outside the house. He certainly did not remember putting them on, which meant…

"Bard, you're blushing," said Grethe.

Bard struggled the few steps to the cubby in one corner. He did not have the energy or the time to unfasten the breeches, and simply fished around for a hole large enough to piss through, leaning on the palm of his hand against the opposite wall. As the muscles in his gut relaxed, much of the pain did, too.

Grethe was bobbing around behind him, trying to peek. Bard shifted so his shoulder blocked her.

"Bard, I must see what color it is," she said reproachfully.

"En't I got eyes?" said Bard. "It's yellow. Same color it always is."

"Dark yellow or light?"

"Middlin'."

"Any orange to it, or brown?"

"Grethe…" he groaned.

"Well?" He heard one small foot tapping impatiently behind him.

"No," he said, beaten. "Just ordinary piss."

"I do wish you'd let me see. Is there an odor to it, Bard?"

"Too late," said Bard, "I'm finished." He'd never been so glad to be done pissing in all his life.

"Come and sit," said Grethe, steering Bard over to the table. He was relieved to sit down again; he was starting to feel dizzy after his exertions in the water-cubby.

Grethe spooned him a bowl of mush from the old iron kettle hanging over the fire. "Let it lie a minute," she instructed. "I'll get the salt." She clambered up the ladder to the second story, and came back down again with the small saltpot cradled in her arm. She placed it on the table, sprinkled a pinch of salt from it onto Bard's bowl, stirred it vigorously for him, and finally slid the breakfast over.

"Eat it slow," she cautioned. "You've had naught to eat but water and arnica tea for three days or more."

"I have to hurry," said Bard. "I've missed so much work it'll be a miracle if I have any contracts left I haven't broken."

"Your contracts are fine," said Grethe. "Your Da took over for the first two days, while you were in the Cage and then the day after. Then he said he couldn't go so long sober and disappeared, so I got Goffried to do it. He's on the _Sindra_ now."

"An' what am I to pay him with? The last o' the coin went to sturdying the foundations," Bard said without thinking. Grethe's face crumpled, and Bard realized what he'd said. "Grethe, I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean to remind ye…" He reached across the table to take her hand.

"It's all right," she said in a small voice. "I'm glad that's been done. I'd rather have sturdy foundations than money."

"But I can't pay Goffried," said Bard. "I haven't got enough."

"I agreed to mend some things for him," said Grethe, shaking off her sadness with a visible effort. "I mended his shirt and breeches for the first day, and then patched up his coat for the second. And I found your Da in The Dormer and dragged him home, and he's sobering up to take over for Goffried tomorrow. You can't think of poling a barge, not in the shape you're in. And why aren't you eating?"

Bard obediently took a bite. It tasted richer than he could remember it tasting before.

"Butter?" he asked, swallowing.

"Aye," said Grethe. "I traded Auld Bettine a wreath of paper flowers for butter and cheese. Young Bettine's getting married and needed a headdress still."

"Where'd ye get the paper flowers?" asked Bard.

"I made them."

"Out of what paper?"

"Some scrap I found in the office upstairs, and some colored paper from Gentle Lou."

"Go on, then," said Bard, "what'd ye trade to Gentle Lou?"

"A kiss," said Grethe matter-of-factly. Bard fumbled his spoon and spattered himself with porridge, and Grethe laughed. "Nay, Bard, I'm only teasing. I darned a pair of socks for him, he gave me the paper, I made the paper into a flower wreath for Young Bettine, Auld Bettine gave me butter and cheese, and here you are eating a good wholesome breakfast because of it."

"Seems a powerful lot of work just for butter," said Bard. "Have ye run yourself ragged, then?"

"Not at all," said Grethe. "I was glad of a chance to meet people. Sally Ague introduced me to Auld Bettine and it went from there. And I could mend clothes and make paper flowers right here by the fire, and keep an eye on you at the same time." She twisted her fingers anxiously. "And I...I was glad to have something to keep me busy, or I'd have gone mad. I'm so relieved you're mending, Bard, I could dance."

"Well, I couldn't," he said, trying to keep the heartache out of his voice. He hated that she should break her back just to keep his sorry soul in his body.

"Not for a while yet," she agreed. "Your Da has promised he can man the _Sindra_ two days in a row if I give him the third to himself. And Goffried has agreed to do three whole days if I broider something pretty for his sweetheart's birthday. I've already found someone who will trade me colored floss and linen for a stomach tonic, and I got the ingredients for the tonic from Sally Ague in exchange for one of Mama's remedies she hadn't heard before." Grethe's voice caught, but she pushed on, "So you see, I'll not be a burden to you. I want very much not to be a burden."

"You couldn't be a burden to me if you tried," said Bard unhappily. How was he ever to give her up if she insisted on twining herself into the weft of his world? He tried to believe it was only that he didn't want to get used to luxuries like butter in his porridge. To distract himself, he said, "So you've met my Da, then?"

"Yes, he came in the first night I was here. I don't think he even saw me, or you. I had to wake him the next morning, nor was he too pleased about it; but I did manage to convince him that you weren't well enough to barge the _Sindra_. I still don't think he believes we're married, but at least he does what I tell him as long as I feed him first."

"Aye, that'll be Da," said Bard. "I'm sorry, Grethe. I know ye can't have wanted this…"

"He's still better than Mistress Grundel," said Grethe. "I'm allowed to talk back to _him_."

"Not just Da," Bard said, "I mean I'm sorry about everything. Getting arrested and losing three days of work—"

"You didn't lose them," pointed out Grethe. "I got them back for you. So you see there's some benefit to having a wife."

Bard found he couldn't finish his porridge. "About that…" he said.

Grethe's eyes narrowed. "If you're thinking of saying something foolish, Bard, you'd better swallow it fast, for I've not nursed you through three days of will-you-die-or-won't-you just to have you talk nonsense at me."

"I've only been thinkin'," said Bard, "I went to you at Grundel's awful fast, and maybe if I'd but given you more time you'd ha' seen you had other options. Better ones, an' all. And I don't want to hold you to something you were rushed into."

"Well, it's a little late for that, Bard, for we're married now, and it's stamped and signed and filed. You can't get out of it now."

"I'll never want to get out of it," said Bard. "But you might, with time."

Grethe stood up very fast. "Do you think I don't know my own mind?" she asked quietly.

"I think you know it as well as you can," he said, choosing his words carefully. "But you've never lived like this before, and I have. You might find, after the relief from bein' free of the Master wears off, that this life doesn't suit you, and that you can't be happy in it. An' if someone else were to notice you, someone with money and a bit of status in the town, an' you're tied to me permanently, you might start to be bitter, and regret you married me so quick. I'm not sayin' this to offend you, or to say I don't trust you to know your mind. But you don't know what life can be like, here. You can't know a thing like that in a day, or three days, or a month. Sometimes life gets so rough you'd do almost anything to get free of it, and it seems hunger and cold and the whole world's conspiring so to part you from living that you might as well let them. I know this, even if you don't, and it hurts me down to my bones to think of you suffering so."

Grethe sat back down. "I know things will be hard sometimes—but being rich didn't save me from hard things either. I don't believe anything will make me regret being your wife, but I understand that you have a different way of looking at it. So I ask you: what must I do to prove to you that I haven't married you lightly?"

Bard ran a hand through his tangled hair. This wasn't going at all as he'd meant it to. "There's not a thing you need to prove. I only want you to know, I'll do anything I can to help you, and you need not repay me by tying yourself to me forever."

"I say again, Bard, it's done. The contract has been filed. We are married now."

"Did you read the contract very close?" asked Bard. "Did you study the terms?"

"I read it twice," she said. "I know what I signed."

"And did you happen to make note of the part about, mm, about consummation?"

Grethe's face and neck turned pink. "Well, as I said, I read it twice," she answered.

"So then you'll know that if it's not consummated within a year, you can have the union dissolved?"

"Bard, what are you saying?"

"I wish I could give you more than a year to decide," said Bard, "but maybe it'll be enough."

"You mean to say," gasped Grethe, "you don't want to, to consummate?"

Bard's clothes felt suddenly very tight. "Wanting doesn't enter into it," he said. "I'm saying you have a year to see if you can be happy with me." He did not say that he was sure she could not. Not that he'd ever dream of blaming her for it. _He_ wasn't even happy with him. It would hurt something terrible to see her go, but it would be worse, he thought, to see her grow to hate him as the years dragged out.

"Please reconsider," said Grethe urgently. "That provision is only there for people who marry because they think they have to, and find out later they were mistaken. It's not meant for us."

"But we can use it," argued Bard. "It can give you a way out, d'you see?"

"I don't want a way out!"

"But you might, later on." Bard took a deep breath. She was fighting this harder than he'd expected her to, and it was all he could do to press his point when he wanted so much to give in. Even with as much pain as he was in, the sight of Grethe with her eyes blazing and her cheeks apple-pink gave him a powerful yearning to pull her into his lap and rumple her dress for her. She was making this impossible.

"You asked what you had to do to prove you've not married me lightly," said Bard, playing the only card he had left. "If you'll prove it, do as I ask and wait a year. If you still want to be married then, I'll know you really mean it. And until then, I'll do everything in my power to make sure you're safe, and fed, and warm. You have my help freely, Grethe. You need not pay me for it with something so dear as your own life."

"You really mean to wait a whole year?" she asked quietly. Bard nodded. "And I cannot change your mind?" He shook his head, and Grethe sighed heavily. "If this is what I must do to prove myself," she said, "I'll do it. But you should know, I...I…" She bowed her head and didn't finish.

Grethe stood, shoved her feet into her boots and laced them with trembling fingers. "Finish your breakfast," she said quietly. "Drink nothing but water, and be sure to warm it by the fire to take the winter-chill off, or it'll curdle in your belly and give you cramps. If you think of stepping foot outside this warm house I'll hide you, and don't think I won't know. I've got to bring Goffried his lunch and collect the supplies to pay him for his work. The porridge will keep warm on the hearth, and the butter and cheese are both on the sill keeping cold." She flung her cloak over her shoulders and slipped her hands into her rabbit-fur muff. She looked him over once more. "Try to sleep some more if you can," she added, before ducking out the front door into the cold.

* * *

_A/N: AhAHHahAHAHahHAHaHAhHAHahaa_


	11. Chapter 11

Grethe had thought, when Sally Ague sat her down on her wedding night and explained matters to her, that the act of lying with a man sounded so strange and mortifying that she might never bring herself to do it.

After caring for Bard's fevered and broken body for three days, she concluded that she had been half right: she could never bring herself to do it with anyone _but him_. Somehow, she thought, with Bard it would not be so strange, for she trusted him, and knew he'd never laugh at her or make her feel ashamed.

Bard had urinated pitifully little during his illness, and what there was had come out thick and pungent and dark reddish-orange. Of course there was no possibility of him rising to use the water-cubby, and so Grethe had wadded some towels under him and then cleaned him up the best she could. When he'd finally fallen into a restful sleep on the third day, she had carefully pulled his breeches, socks and braies down his legs, and tied them in a net bag dangling from the boardwalk out front to soak in the canal. Then she had taken a bowl of rainwater and sponged him carefully clean, so that the bloody urine which had dried onto his skin wouldn't chafe and make him rash later on.

Grethe had been glad he was not awake to see this performance. By the time she was wrestling a pair of motheaten-but-clean-breeches back over his hips, she'd almost stopped blushing. To be sure, Bard wouldn't be well enough for the strenuous sorts of things Sally had described for some while yet. Grethe thought that by the time he was ready, she would be too.

"Some lasses don't fancy it much," Sally had said, "but I never did have that problem, and neither will you, for if I know a man from a mule Bard'll be just like my Sorgen, an' want you to enjoy it or he won't be able to."

And now the idiot was saying they would need to wait a full year, all because he didn't trust her to marry a man and mean it.

Bard needed looking-after, for the organs of his abdomen had been badly injured and would take time to heal. Grethe was able to keep the _Sindra_ running by trading everything she could think of, skills or knowledge or clothing items off her own person, which meant Bard was trapped at home with her for a full two weeks before she declared him well enough to pole a barge. He wouldn't let her clean him, but instead performed his daily ablutions standing alone before the fire while she was out running errands. He barely allowed her even to raise his shirt to check the bruising on his belly, and suffered it only because she was the more stubborn of the two and he knew it. But when she tried to unlace his breeches to check the rest of the bruises, he jerked away from her hand as if it were on fire.

"Just tell me what to look for, and I'll look for it," he said through gritted teeth.

The last day she made him stay at home, she'd checked his abdomen thoroughly, pressing her hands to every inch to determine if any damage remained beneath the skin. He wore an expression of intense concentration and discomfort the whole time, but whenever she pressed a fading bruise and asked if it hurt, he shook his head.

"I don't believe you," she finally said, splaying her five small fingers across the sprinkling of dark hair on his lower belly. "You keep saying it doesn't hurt and looking like you're about to vomit with pain. If you can't tell me the truth, I'm going to make you stay home for the rest of the month."

"I have to piss," he grunted. "That's all."

"Then go piss," she said, exasperated. "I can check you after. Honestly, Bard, it's a wonder you ever managed to survive this long."

He jolted away from her and into the water-cubby, drawing the curtain tightly closed behind him. Grethe busied herself with scrubbing down the table with a handful of sand.

"Bard?" she called after several minutes. "Did you fall in?"

The curtain swept open and Bard came back out, red in the face. "Finished," he said. "Only hurry, please."

After she'd announced that he was well enough to resume working, Bard would rise before the sun, wash himself with the water and soap he hauled upstairs each night, and dress in the dark. When Grethe heard him moving around upstairs, she would climb out of her makeshift bed of blankets on the floor and poke the embers to wake them up, then mix water and salt and grits in a kettle hanging over the fire. By the time Bard had come down, breakfast was nearly ready and Grethe was dressed. They would eat together and, if Grethe's errands were taking her to that part of town, they would also walk together to the docks under the rising sun. When she had time, Grethe liked to bring him lunch, usually bread and cheese and some dried fruit if she could trade for it. When he also had the time, they would sit together in Sally Ague's front room, sharing what they had with her and Sorgen.

While Bard was on the water Grethe would finish up whatever she'd promised in trade, then make her rounds, carrying things with her in a basket. A tatted lace kerchief for Goffried's sweetheart. A remedy for the cramps brought on by Curly Agnes's flux. Mended coats and kirtles. Grethe soon made herself indispensable to anyone wanting a bit of fine needlework done, and embroidered christening gowns and stomachers and dress coats by the dozen. Those were the most lucrative jobs, for any who could afford fancy work like that could afford to pay her in coin.

When Bard came home at night, he and Grethe would eat together (Da rarely joined them, but came home late and drunk if he came home at all). They would stay up until they yawned, talking of this or that, and then Bard would press her hand and climb up to his loft above the second floor, and Grethe would bank the fire, hang her clothes on a hook and settle down in her blankets on the straw mat Bard had brought down to her from his own loft. Most nights she woke at least once, crying out from nightmares, shaking with fear that the whole house would fall into the lake with her in it, or Bard. But the house stood firm, and eventually she always got back to sleep; and her days kept her so busy that she could usually forget what haunted her nights.

One day over breakfast, Bard said to her, "Grethe, I've been kept so busy keeping up with what Goffried and Da let fall behind that I've done you wrong."

"In what way?"

"I always meant to arrange the house so you could sleep upstairs, and not have to hunker on the floor every night. An' here it's been nigh on a month, and you still sleep on the hearth."

"It's better than that narrow loft you're trapped in," said Grethe. "I'm amazed you can close your eyes at all up there, without so much as a railing to keep you from falling out. And what do _you_ sleep on, may I ask, since you gave me your own mat?"

"I do well enough," said Bard. "I know you've tried not to let me see it, but I can tell you've not slept well; and how could you, with naught but a mat on bare wood for your bed, in the busiest room in the house? I've got a light load today, and should be done by midafternoon. I'll come home and move Da's things into the office, and you can have his room. Sorgen's got some pallets he'll let me have, to make into a bed-frame for you. Tonight you'll sleep off the floor."

"I hate to put your Da from his room…" said Grethe uncertainly.

"He doesn't make it that far half the time anyway. Besides, you're mistress of this house. I'll not let you sleep on the hearth one more night."

Bard was as good as his word. That afternoon, he came home carrying two large wooden pallets of the sort used to keep cargo off the wet docks, then went up to Da's room to clear it out. Soon the room was empty of all but a large wooden trunk which held Bard's old baby clothes and the copy of the marital contract.

Next Grethe stood at the top of the steep wooden ladder and Bard passed the two pallets up to her. He dragged them into her new room and tied them securely together with cords, then laid her straw mat on top of them and covered all with several blankets.

"You ought to have a feather bed," he said regretfully. "Or at least a pillow."

"I don't want a feather bed," she said gently. "But a pillow will be nice. When Spring gets here, you can row me over to the mainland to gather sweet windweed to stuff a case with. Til then I'm happy using the rag-sack."

"Grethe," said Bard, smiling suddenly and gathering her into his arms for a brief hug, "you're a rare sweet lass, at that." He let her go much too quickly, cleared his throat, and went into the office to finish tidying up.

That night, Grethe fell quickly and deeply asleep. But in the middle of the night, the familiar dreams came back to her.

Mama was in the kitchen of their old house, working on her remedies, too absorbed in her work to notice the water swirling across the floor, swallowing up her ankles and the skirts of her dress and her face. Papa was in his study with Bain, and the study was quaking on its foundations, and if they noticed, they did not show it. Grethe was in the house with them, but then suddenly she was standing on the boardwalk, watching the house sink into the roiling lake. She was in the house and out of it, watching it sink and sinking with it, too, and when she opened her mouth to scream the water rushed in and suffocated her—

"Grethe!" She was rocking gently in someone's arms. "Grethe, you're safe, lass, I'm here and I'll keep you safe—"

"Oh, _Bard_," she choked, and clung to him. He held her tightly, his grip the only thing to keep her from sinking back into the cold oblivion of the lake.

"You're safe," he whispered again and again in her ear. "I'll keep you safe."

Bard smoothed her hair away from her sweaty face. His thumb grazed her cheek, gentle and sure. Grethe swallowed a sob. If he kept touching her like that she would fly to pieces. If he let her go she would drown.

She tangled her hand in his hair, and pulled his face close to hers. He resisted for an instant, but only an instant, before he gave in and kissed her. He broke away to kiss her cheeks, her tear-wet eyelids, the tip of her nose, and then her lips again, slow and sweet. He stroked her hair and the sides of her face, and everything his fingers touched his lips caressed a moment later.

Grethe let herself drift on the current of his care back into sleep, and this time, she didn't dream.

* * *

Bard waited for Grethe's eyes to flutter closed and her breathing to ease before he laid her carefully back down and covered her with her blankets. Then he climbed back up to his loft, his heart troubled and aching.

How long had she been having nightmares? His loft was built partially over her room, the ladder up to it standing just outside her door, and so he'd heard her cry out this time. If she'd done the same down on the hearth, he doubted it would have been loud enough to waken him.

But of course she would be having nightmares, after what happened to her family. And Bard had not thought to comfort her, for all his fine words about offering her his protection and help. He lay on the wooden slats of his loft and tried to think of what he might do.

One morning soon after, when the sun rose bright in a blue sky, Bard went to Goffried first thing, and offered him two pounds of fresh meat if he would take over the barge for the day.

"An' where'll ye be findin' fresh meat, then?" asked Goffried suspiciously.

"I intend to shoot it myself," said Bard. "Only I can't do that if I've to mind the cargo today. It's only empty barrels to the Landing to go back to Mirkwood, and the laundry from Southpier and back again. It'll be an easy day for you."

"And what if you don't shoot two pounds of fresh meat?"

"Then I'll owe you three." Before Goffried could protest, Bard added, "You know my word is good."

"All right," Goffried grumblingly agreed.

Bard went back to his wife, who was surprised to see him home again so soon.

"What's wrong?" she asked, standing so quick her sewing fell off her lap. "Are you ill?"

"Not in the least," said Bard. "It's a fine day, warm for the season, and the sun is bright. The animals'll be stirring on the mainland, and I've a mind to go and shoot us something for the pot. How soon can you be ready?"

"But I must finish this shirt for Fat Ogan. I've promised it to him tomorrow."

"I know of a good sheltered place where I can lay you a fire out of the wind, and you can finish it while I'm hunting. But we'd best go quickly, or all the animals'll be napping in their holes by the time I get there."

"Well…" she wavered. "The weather _is_ fine for the season."

Bard grinned and swung her around once, then put her down and began to collect the things they'd need. In half an hour's time, they were both bundled into Bard's ketch, along with his longbow and a full quiver of arrows, Grethe's sewing basket and work, and a heap of cooking-roots so they'd have something to eat whether Bard shot anything or not.

Grethe leaned back and let the sun shine through her closed eyelids. "It's good to be away from that pile," she said happily.

"'That pile'?" Bard repeated in mock offense. "You mean my house?"

"_Our_ house," said Grethe, "and no. I mean the town. I'll be glad to walk on firm earth for a little while."

Bard rowed harder, the faster to get his wife's feet on firm earth.

He pulled the boat up in its usual place and tied it to a tree. Then he helped Grethe out and showed her the way to his little hunting camp, in the lee of a large boulder. He built up a fire for her, and saw that she was settled and warm before taking his bow and heading out into the woods.

Bard had stalked through these woods since he was old enough to gather kindling for the townspeople; he'd begun hunting here at twelve, when he first held a bow. He knew where the game was to be found, and how to walk quiet enough not to let it know he'd found it. If he only got a rabbit or two, it would be a good day's hunting, for at this time of year meat was dear and could be sold for a good profit.

As it was, he shot three rabbits and a rooting boar of good size; and the boar led him to good pungent mushrooms besides. Bard put the mushrooms in his pocket, hung the rabbits over his shoulder and dragged the boar over a mile back to where he'd left Grethe.

Bard built the fire up high and buried the roots in the hot ashes, then went about hanging the boar where the wild animals couldn't get to it. By then Grethe had finished her sewing and stowed away her things in the boat so they wouldn't get bloody, and Bard showed her how to skin and gut the smallest of the rabbits.

"We'll keep this one to eat, and sell the rest at market. I'll come back for the boar early tomorrow; it'll keep well in the cold overnight, and I can get a better price for it if I sell it earlier in the day."

Then Bard began to hack large strips of meat from the rabbit, and gave them to Grethe to cut up into more manageable pieces. They skewered the meat on sticks, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and stuck them in the earth around the fire so the meat could cook. They saved out the guts and the meaty bones to be made into stew later; and collected the foul entrails to sell as bait, and the skin to sell to the tanner.

While the roots and meat cooked, Grethe begged Bard to show her his shooting, for she had never seen it. And so he took his long yew bow, and the arrows he had brought with him, and he gathered great armfuls of dead grass and tied them into a tight bundle, and set them on a high rock. He walked twenty paces from it, nocked an arrow to the bow, pulled back the string and shot the arrow straight into the center of the grass bundle.

Then he did the same at thirty paces, and forty, and fifty. Each arrow found its mark.

Finally he drew the last arrow from the quiver and held it up for her to see.

"The Black Arrow," he said, "and my most treasured possession. It was my father's, though he was no bowman; and his father's, and his. Though I have shot it many times, it has ever returned to my hand."

Grethe ran her pale fingers over the smooth ebony shaft and feathers. "It is a beautiful thing, Bard," she said. "A thing to be proud of. It is larger than the others; does that not make it harder to shoot?"

"Perhaps," said Bard, "but it is like an old friend to me, and it has never missed its mark. Sometimes I think it is alive."

Then he nocked it to the bow, pulled the string and released it. It sliced clean through the leather thong holding the bundle together, so that it exploded in a burst of sweet-smelling hay. Grethe clapped and laughed, and they went to pick up the scattered arrows together. And then dinner was ready.

Over dinner, Grethe told Bard a tale of Idril Celebrindal, a princess of the hidden city of Gondolin, who led a band of refugees out of the city when it was attacked by Balrogs and dragons, wolves and wargs.

"Like Girion," she said, smiling. "But she was an elf. She led her people down the river to the mouths of Sirion, and eventually sailed into the West with her human husband Tuor."

"And what happened to her after that?"

Grethe shrugged. "She passed beyond mortal knowledge. The old tales tell that the Elves know what will happen to them after they die, but if humans ever did, we forgot long ago."

"What do you think?" asked Bard.

"Something wonderful, I hope," said Grethe. The sun was lowering in the sky, and cast a golden light over her face. Bard thought even Idril Celebrindal could not be as beautiful as his own wife.

"I wish they could have brought the bodies up," she said suddenly, her voice catching in her throat. A chill wind rose with the sinking of the sun, and Bard felt her shivering beside him. He put his arm around her shoulders, and held her close, and she burrowed into his coat.

"Why did I live and they did not?" she asked in a small voice. Bard looked down at her bent head, and wished he could give her an answer.

"You did live," he said simply, "and it is not your fault that they did not."

"I was gone. I ran off to find you. I snuck out of the house without even saying a word of goodbye. I should have been there with them, Bard, I should have...I should have…" She lost her words in tears, and Bard held her close to him, and rocked her gently. The sun sank slowly into the Lake, and their fire burned low, and still she cried in Bard's arms, till her breath came in hiccups and the tear-tracks covered her cheeks. Bard pressed a small kiss beside her mouth. She tasted of salt, and the meat they'd been eating, and something else which was warm and dark and endearing.

Grethe caught his mouth with hers as he drew away, and the resolve he had so carefully tended all evening dissolved into mist. He knew that she was grieving—that she was lonely—that her whole world was broken apart and she wanted only relief for the pain. But he could not stop himself from holding her tighter and returning her kisses. Her hand snaked around his neck and settled comfortably at the nape where it seemed to belong. His fingers traced the line of her jaw and her smooth throat. He could feel her pulse through the fragile skin, pounding fast as his own.

When he touched his tongue questioningly to her lips she opened her mouth to him, and soon the taste of her swirled through him like wine. He was reminded obscurely of the ripe pear she had once fed him, bite by bite by bite.

But night was falling fast, and the air grew colder every minute, and Bard knew that it would only be harder to row home the later it got. And so he pulled away, all the warmth of him evaporating between their separated bodies. Grethe lunged forward with a little moan, her lips swollen and glistening, her cheeks stained pink as berry-juice, and Bard knew that if he did not stand up and walk away this very minute, he would break the promise he'd made to leave her free for a year.

So Bard stood up, and brushed his hand against her hair and smiled as best he could. She smiled blissfully back at him, and they loaded the boat together, climbed in, and were soon rowing steadily back over the moonlit Lake. He knew that she had wanted only comfort, and he was glad, _so glad_ to have given it.

He knew also that if—when—she did leave him in a year, his heart would break and never mend.

* * *

_A/N: There. Is that enough kissing for you?_


	12. Chapter 12

There was but one cure for her sadness, Grethe soon discovered, and it was a cure her husband was miserly about dispensing. When she woke screaming from a nightmare—when their talk turned to her family, or to the subject of death—when he came home at night to find her sobbing over the onions for their stew—he would fold her up in his powerful arms until she had cried herself out, and then, when she was emptied out from guilt and sorrow, he would pull her into his lap and kiss the tears from her face, and fill the aching hollow in her breast with something warm and pure. If she tried to kiss him at any other time, he would somehow elude her without even seeming to move and she would catch only his cheek or chin. Beyond kisses they never ventured. Bard would not even sleep in the bed with her; the morning after a nightmare, Grethe always woke alone, even if her husband had spent an hour or more consoling her in the dark.

During the day Grethe could keep herself busy enough to pretend she didn't mind this, but at night she had no barriers. It did not help that she dreaded sleep, and would do anything to put it off. By the time they had been married six months, she was sure her looks must be going, for she'd not had more than one or two full nights' sleep per week since before the wedding. She wouldn't have minded so much if he wouldn't leave her to wake up alone, still in her shift and shawl.

But her days were full and busy. It was hard work, to be sure, and the material comforts she had always taken for granted were rarely available to her now, and never for free. But she liked to be useful; she liked making money, and gradually neatening up their house, and learning to cook. And she was sought almost as often as Sally Ague for her doctoring, and learned as much from the old woman as she ever had from an herboire.

In the first few months the townspeople distrusted her outright, but eventually became cautiously accepting, on the basis of her hard work and her being a transplant from the Southpier and therefore equipped with rare knowledge of all things fashionable. Some would always cut her when they encountered her on the walks, crossing over the canal to conspicuously deny her welcome; but most liked her well enough, if they thought of her at all.

In the springtime the sun began to thaw the town and the odors that the winter chill had kept down billowed out of everything. Grethe and Bard both bathed daily and washed their underthings every Sunday, as did nearly everyone else in town; but they were more lax about laundering the bulky outer items which could not easily be scrubbed in a bucket on the boardwalk. So on the second day of May, while the upper crust were recovering from their first-of-May celebrations the day before, Grethe gathered all the linens in the household, all her clothes and Bard's and his Da's, and every towel and rag and sheet and blanket she could find, and Bard rowed her across the Lake along with everyone else in town too poor to have servants do their laundry for them. A full third of the population turned out. The men carried the clothes to the Laundry Pool for their wives and sisters and mothers, then vanished to chop and stack wood, hunt, and tend their gardens in shirts and boots and precious little else.

Grethe had always known of Laundry Day, for it had always been spoken of with scandalised horror by her mother's friends. It was a day when morals were loosened and men and women ran around half-naked and dripping—or so people who had never once been to a Laundry Day confidently asserted.

"At any rate," Mama had always said, "they're sure to catch their deaths, revelling in their unders like that. But I suppose it must feel very bracing."

And now it was Grethe's lot to join them. Not at all to her surprise, Laundry Day was a day not of immoral cavorting but of hard work, and plenty of it. The Laundry Pool was a large, round, shallow hollow in a clear stream, where the water flowed continuously but not quickly over small smooth stones, and everyone could fit themselves and all their linens. Grethe staked out a spot between Sally Ague and Young Bettine, and soaped her clothes and beat them against a flat rock half-submerged in the stream. At first she concentrated so intently on getting all the soap out that she paid attention to little else; but after a while, she found the rhythm of it and began to listen to the chatter of her companions.

"An' how're ye likin' the marrit life, Young Bettine?" Sally asked. "Is yer Frain as good with his hands as he is with his fishing pole?" Several women laughed loudly.

"And what do Frain's hands have to do with marrit life?" Young Bettine asked unsuspectingly. There were sympathetic hisses all around. "I admit, much as I do like bein' mistress o' the house, I didna think the marriage bed would lose its shine so very quick-like. Sometimes I pretend to be asleep when I'm not." Young Bettine was very forthright.

"Pop out a few babes," crowed a woman further down the line, "and yer tits'll sag so it loses its shine for Frain, too."

"Aye, but ye'll not have a moment's rest with babes in the house," supplied another.

"Either way, ye never get a wink o' sleep," said Sally. "Come to me sometime, an' I'll give ye a pinch o' somethin' to help."

"To help me, or to help him?" asked Young Bettine. There was more laughter.

"An' how about you, Mistress Grethe?" called Edwina, Cidery Pummas's wife. She had once walked into the house without knocking and interrupted Bard when he happened to be industriously comforting his wife after a crying spell, and seemed to find endless hilarity in this fact. "D'ye like bein' marrit to Mad Bard as much as ye did three month ago?"

"From the hollow look o' her eyes," suggested Auld Bettine, "I'd say she likes it a great deal, or not at all!"

"And how's Mad Bard's shootin'?" asked Nan the fishscraper. "Do tell us, for we've more than one of us wondered. He may be not all there, but then it en't as if a fellow needs a full head o' wits to hit a mark. I don't know but the lacky-brained ones are the readiest to try for the bullseye."

Grethe thought of the haybale he'd exploded with the the Black Arrow, though she knew that was not what Nan had been asking. "His aim is true," she said honestly. She bent her head to her work and tried to block out the sound of laughter.

"Don't take it to heart, Grethe," said Young Bettine in a low voice. "I wish Frain would look at me just once the way Bard is always looking at you. How do you make him do it?"

"Do what?"

"Want you so much." Young Bettine slapped a pillowcase wistfully against a rock.

"I think you've got it wrong," said Grethe. "When he kisses me, I think he must want me after all; but then it's so easy for him to stop, and so hard for me to. I think maybe he's just very patient."

"Patient, my furry turret!" cawed Auld Bettine, who had heard this. "He's mad, not dead!"

"Do tell us, for we're curious, Mistress Grethe: have ye named all the fleas in his bed yet, or haven't ye got round to all of them?" Edwina's voice was vicious.

Fortunately for Grethe—or perhaps for Edwina—Sally took pity on her young protege and changed the subject.

* * *

The day had started early, and by midafternoon the last of the laundry was hanging from poles in the Fairgrounds, flapping and fluttering in a fortuitous wind. The women made preparations for the supper feast while the shifts they'd worn to do the washing in dried. Grethe helped carry water and set it to boil, and chopped vegetables and brewed tea.

When the clothes on the poles (and their bodies) were dry, the women helped each other into corsets and dresses, and took down the laundry to fold while the men trickled back bearing new vegetables from their mainland gardens, and good fresh meat. Grethe's heart leaped with pride to see Bard bearing the front end of a young buck, its neck punctured by a hole of such size it could only have been caused by the Black Arrow. She watched him hang it to bleed, saving the blood of course, and then truss it well and lay it on the _Sindra_.

"Red Bertrid was none too pleased that I brought it down," he said to Grethe who hovered curiously nearby. "He loosed an arrow at it and missed, and startled it into the underbrush. I shot it while it was running away."

"That must have been a difficult shot," said Grethe.

"Mm," said Bard. "Bertrid claimed as it was his, since he'd seen it first, and I said if first sight was grounds for ownership, he had no business bein' married to anyone but the midwife who birthed him."

"I can't imagine he liked that any," said Grethe.

"Nor did he. I've already sold the buck to Walburga who supplies the Master's table. I want to ferry it over to the Master's house now and get a receipt, afore Bertrid has a chance of stealing the antlers or marring the hide."

"Are you not staying for stew and music?" asked Grethe, dismayed.

"I never do," said Bard. "I don't like to be in company when the ale's flowing. But I've not forgot you, lass. Sorgen's promised he'll see ye safe home."

"I'd rather go back with you," said Grethe.

"And miss your share of the party?" Bard seemed truly surprised.

"Their singing'll be nothing to yours."

"You wouldn't rather stay here and dance?"

"Not if you aren't. Who would I dance with, anyway? Gentle Lou?"

Bard finished securing the buck to the barge. He looked up at her a bit sadly. "I do wish you might've had your share of pleasant things," he said.

"You're the most pleasant thing I can think of," Grethe declared . "After you've delivered the deer and I've put away the laundry, we can have a bit of leftover potato pie and a drop of the clover mead Sally gave us for a wedding gift." Perhaps she could convince him to kiss her when she _hadn't_ been crying.

"Are you sure? You've had so few outings since…"

"I'm quite sure. Nothing could make me happier."

He still seemed indecisive, so Grethe walked over and sat herself between the buck and the laundry, to make his mind up for him. Bard shrugged, and stepped into the barge, and began to row them back to town.

Bard dropped Grethe at the empty house with the laundry before he delivered the buck to the Master's house. She built up the fire and put the leftover potato pie on the grate to warm, spread the sheets and blankets on the beds, and put the folded laundry away. She spread a cloth she had embroidered on the table, and laid out plates and clean cups. She even planted a little posy of wildflowers she had gathered at the fairgrounds in a cup of water.

When Bard returned, he had his own surprise for her.

"Strawberries!" Grethe exclaimed, taking the overflowing wicker basket from his hands and placing it on the table. "I've not had fresh strawberries since I don't know when! Where did you get them?"

"I found a stand of wild ones in the woods. I sold most of them to Walburga with the buck, but she wanted only the flawless ones for the Master's table. None of them are rotten, only crushed a bit. I hope you don't mind." His black brows lifted endearingly, and Grethe kissed his cheek in thanks.

"They're perfect," she said. "With them and the mead, we'll eat like lord and lady. Now go wash up, you've blood under your nails."

"That's strawberry juice."

"It's red," said Grethe, "so clean it up. Hurry now, I'm hungry."

They made a merry meal of their meager provisions. After supper, they sat and told each other stories. Bard sang her a song he had made of Lallyon, first Lady of Dale.

_Of Lallyon the tales do tell,_

_who was a lady fierce and strong._

_In Erebor's shadow she did dwell_

_before the days of song._

_._

_The dawning of the world was seen_

_when first she opened up her eyes._

_In solitude she danced between_

_bare lands and empty skies._

_._

_In her did the Old Magic linger;_

_nature obeyed every request._

_She was both audience and singer;_

_her word was manifest._

_._

_For years she knew not human ways,_

_living as she did all alone,_

_till a traveler spied her in amaze_

_and fell at her feet prone._

_._

_'Come here to me!' he did demand_

_'And in my home keep company!_

_I'll be your amorous ally, and_

_you'll be my worshiped queen!_

_._

_'You should not make this strange request,'_

_Bright Lallyon reprimanded._

_'I will not leave my childhood nest,_

_and from my home be stranded.'_

_._

_'But you are lovelier,' he said,_

_'than any maiden I have known._

_I'll take you now alive or dead_

_somehow you'll be my own.'_

_._

_But Lallyon was not thus cowed_

_And in her heart now wrath was stirred._

_She stood up tall and stern and proud_

_and spoke a single word._

_._

_Though never once in the mountain's lee_

_did the Lady become a Wife,_

_from her suitor's blood sprang root and seed;_

_his death was the fount of life._

_._

_When one small word she did deliver,_

_her will was swiftly done:_

_the man's blood formed a mighty river,_

_for the word she'd said was 'Run.'"_

Grethe sat watching the dancing flames on the grate enact the lay of Lallyon, the virginal mother of the Running River and all life in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain. She had of course grown up knowing of Lallyon, and the suitor whose sacrifice was the source of all her homeland's vitality. But no telling of the story had ever made her feel like this, strong and defiant as Lallyon, wanton and weak as her supplicant. Bard's voice pulsed through her veins stronger than the mead, till the hair stood up on her scalp and a thrill ran down her spine.

"I think the suitor cannot have been very much like you," she said irreverently, "or he would not have been denied."

"I hope he was not like me. I think I would have more sense than to make lewd threats to a goddess. But in one way we are alike," he added bitterly, "for he was a worthless knave and completely undeserving of the thing he asked." He turned away from Grethe, and swallowed the last of his mead.

"Bard…"

"It is very late," he said. "And you've had a hard day."

"I'm not so tired, Bard."

"Aye, well, _I_ am. I'll bid you goodnight, lass." He shot up the ladder as if his boots were on fire, leaving her alone.

* * *

_A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I was on vacation. Next chapter will come sooner, I promise!_


	13. Chapter 13

Bard lay on top of his blankets, stifling in the thick air of his loft. He wished that Grethe had stayed on the mainland with Sally and Sorgen. He wished she had not laid out a pretty meal for them, and opened a bottle of mead. He wished she had not asked him for a song, and he wished she had not listened to it with her lips just parted and her fingers drifting absently along the edge of her bodice, on the tantalizing boundary between fabric and flesh. He wished above all that he were stronger, for it was a close thing most nights, and getting closer; and he was afraid of his own weakness.

But however much he might distrust his own tenuous self-discipline, he could not hear her crying out in fear at night and not go to her. He could not leave her drowning in that collapsing house, and do nothing to bring her back to safety—not even if it robbed him of a full night's sleep, and his own sanity. And if her need was for tangible reminders that she was alive and not dead, then he would hold her and kiss her and caress her, and put off thinking of the coming day when he must give her up.

So when he heard her sounds of unquiet that night, he shrugged off the beginnings of his own sluggish sleep and climbed down to her without thinking. Even in her nightmares she slept deeply, and could not be waked without considerably effort. He did now as he always did, knelt beside her and gathered her gently in his arms. She curled against him automatically, one hand moving to grip the neck of his shirt.

She shone like a pearl in the light from the open windows, a sheen of perspiration beaded on her upper lip, fine hairs sticking to her forehead. She shifted in his arms, tugging at his shirt and burrowing against him, and the movement made Bard ache and sweat.

"Wake up, Grethe," he whispered, and in the stillness his voice sounded hoarse and loud as a crow's cawing. But she did not wake, not even when he jostled her gently and whispered her name again. Their nightclothes grew damp between their heated bodies. She squirmed and moaned in his lap. What sort of nightmare was this, anyway?

"Grethe, wake up," he said again, louder this time, but still she lay damp and fragrant and restless in his arms, and he realized with a mounting sense of panic that he should not have come down to her room at all, for this could be no nightmare and it tested his very sanity to stay. He began to gently lower her back onto the sleeping mat.

But at his movement, her hand left his shirt and curled inexorably around his neck, trapping him beside her. Her moans were coming faster now, dissolving irresistibly into whimpers. He realized with a helpless shudder that her free hand was creeping up one downy thigh, and bringing her shift with it. The only honorable thing to do, he knew, would be to look away; and he did—eventually.

_Wake up, please wake up_, he thought desperately, but he could no longer make his mouth form the words.

Grethe's lips opened and closed soundlessly and she suddenly arched her back, her whole body stiffening, the fitful rise and fall of her chest suspended at its apex. Just as Bard was beginning to fear that she'd never breathe again, she let out a jagged gasp, and at last slumped bonelessly in his arms.

Bard sat with her, hanging onto his mind by a thread, until the flush had faded from her cheeks and her breathing returned to a deep, slow regularity. As soon as her iron grip on his neck loosened, he pushed her gingerly from his lap. She curled up on her side, her lips curved into a hint of a contented smile.

Then his self-restraint broke and he stumbled away from her, tripping down the ladder and bursting outside to dunk his whole head in the rainbarrel.

* * *

Grethe woke from the most satisfying sleep she'd had in many months, and rose and dressed with a bounce in her step. She went down the ladder and kissed Bard's Da on the cheek as he went out into the pre-dawn—and, it must be said, startling the poor old man who still had no idea why she was living in his house and sleeping in his room. She stirred up the fire and hung a fresh pot of porridge and water over it, whistling tunelessly all the while.

The porridge thickened and filled the house with its homey fragrance, streaks of pink began to crowd the sky, and Bard still wasn't up. Grethe's chest tightened in fear. Was he ill? Had he fallen from his bunk in the night and broken his neck? Overcome by foreboding, she bolted up the ladders to his loft.

He was still in bed, and breathing, and therefore alive; but he looked unwell.

"Bard," whispered Grethe urgently, shaking him by the shoulder. "Bard, wake up!"

He jerked awake so quickly he almost flung her backward off the ladder.

"What is it?" he said groggily. "Are you ill?"

"No," said Grethe, reaching out to feel his forehead. "It's morning. I'm checking to see if _you're_ ill. I'm afraid you have a cold sweat."

"I's not sweat," he said, propping himself up on his elbows. "Just water."

"Do you mean to tell me you have a leak up here and you've not fixed it or slept somewhere else?"

"No, I...I fell in the canal last night." He had backed all the way against the far wall and curled his legs up under his shirt, as if afraid she might bite him. Not an unreasonable fear, in light of what he had just told her.

"And what were you doing out and about last night?" she demanded.

"Just couldn't sleep is all," he said. "Too hot."

"Well, of all the carp-headed things, Bard!" Grethe burst out. "If you're going to insist on sleeping in the stuffiest part of the house, of course you'll be too hot! I keep telling you to just sleep in my room where the windows are, there's space aplenty for it even if you _do_ sleep on the floor. I know you want to spare my precious virginity for another six months, for some unnatural reason that you've _never yet_ explained to my satisfaction, but if you're going to take foolish risks it will affect me too! What am I to do if you fall in at night and no one's around to fish you out? Eh, Bard, what then? Who shall I turn to if you're drowned?" She bit her lip but could not keep the tears from coming.

Bard inched forward, dropped down over the edge of the loft, and plucked Grethe neatly from the ladder. She hung in his arms, her feet dangling off the floor, and buried her face in his shirt.

"I can't lose them and you, too," she whispered. "It's almost more than I can do to let you go out on the barge, for all I know you're a good swimmer. If you fall in the canal you might hit your head and be sucked under the houses. It's happened so, before. I wish I could make you know how much I need you, Bard. I cannot do without you."

"I'm sorry, Grethe," he murmured in her hair. "Of course you're right, it was foolish of me. I won't fall in again."

"Do you promise?"

"Aye, lass. I promise." He smiled and kissed her forehead, and set her down. "I'll just dress and come down for breakfast. I'm sorry I overslept and worried you for nothing."

* * *

In August was the Flight Festival, when all and sundry turned out to feast and dance and buy and sell. Bard had shot the stag which was roasted over a huge fire for the main course. But even with the money from its sale he could not afford not to work during most of the festival, hauling wood to keep the fire high, hauling water for stewpots and dunking barrels.

But Grethe was glad of the opportunity to wear flowers in her hair, and walk through the Fairgrounds looking at what the vendors had for sale or trade. She bought a length of soft blue wool which would make a very handsome tunic for Bard; he had worn the same threadbare dirt-colored one ever since she had met him, and she had never seen him in anything else.

She bought herbs from Western traders, salt and medicinal brandy from Rhûn, and a few cooking pots from the Iron Hills, to replace Bard's rusty uneven ones. She sold all of the lavender sachets and broidered stomachers she had made in preparation for the Festival.

Grethe wandered around with her pockets full of coin and her hands full of honey rolls stuffed with dried fruit. While buying a mug of cold ale, she heard a voice at her shoulder.

"Grethe?" said Lisette uncertainly. "Is that really you?"

Grethe turned to look at the girl who had so nearly become her sister. The sight of Lisette's pretty face brought a lump into Grethe's throat, which she could not swallow down. Lisette seemed similarly struck by memories, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Then Lisette threw her arms around Grethe and hugged her tightly.

"I haven't _seen_ you since that day you left! Grethe, whatever _happened_ to you? You're dressed so drab! Everyone in town says you've been living under the very same roof as Mad Bard, but I wouldn't listen to them. I always defended you no matter what." Lisette linked her arm through Grethe's and steered her away from the ale tent.

"And why shouldn't I live under Bard's roof? He's my husband," said Grethe.

"But Grethe—_how?_" Lisette turned to her in shock. "He's not—he doesn't even have any _people!_"

Grethe laughed at this. "I assure you, dear Lizzie," she said, "that was the _least_ impediment to our marrying."

"I knew he sometimes rowed you around the Lake," said Lisette, "but I'd no idea it was, hmm."

"It wasn't, really," said Grethe. "I did say, once, that I liked him better than anyone, and he hinted he felt the same. But unless something changed, what could we do about it? And then, well...something changed."

"Losing your house, you mean? D'you think you still would have married him if...if…" Lisette could not finish, but Grethe knew what she meant.

"I don't know," she said. "I hope so."

"So, how did you arrange it?" asked Lisette, shaking off her moment of sadness. "With Mama trying to foist Uncle Saul on you at every turn, and all. I'm glad you didn't marry _him_, anyways, no matter how much I wanted you for family. Did Bard pass you notes through the servants?"

"No," said Grethe. "I was sitting with your Mama and I happened to look out the window and see him out on the Lake. I didn't even know if he was coming for me or not, but I couldn't sit still any longer and pretend that everything was going to go back to normal. So I left. And it turned out he _was_ coming for me, and we got married twenty minutes later."

"Oh, Grethe, that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard," sighed Lisette. "You must come and have tea with me and the girls. I'm sure they've all missed you terribly, and they're all _dying_ of curiosity ever since you disappeared."

"All right." Grethe had never much liked tea circles, but she felt a strange kinship with the brightly-dressed young ladies who made room for her at a table laid with dainty things to eat. They had so few worries; they still went to parties and cotillions, and flirted and looked over their beaux, and wore a new dress every month. Grethe's dress, though clean, looked very homespun beside theirs. Yet until less than a year ago she had been one of them, as cosseted as the richest debutante at the table, with prospects as bright as the sun.

The girls welcomed her back into the fold with shrieks of joyful surprise. On some of their faces the joy was more real than on others, but the surprise was genuine wherever she looked. She wondered why that should be—it was common knowledge that she at least had not drowned when her house collapsed, so they all must know she was alive _somewhere_—until the third time she saw a girl's eyes drop down to her flat abdomen and then dart back up at her face in astonishment.

Grethe sipped tea and nibbled pastries, and answered her old friends' questions and ignored their curious glances. Many of them responded as Lisette had done, but a few looked quite tart when she described the mastersmen dragging her bridegroom away.

"Brawling in taverns," sniffed Elise Looffen, as if Bard's arrest over the beating of Cidery Pummas confirmed everything she had ever thought or suspected of him. "No offense, dear, but I'm glad he was arrested. Maybe next time he won't act like a wild animal."

"You wouldn't think that if a man had been fighting over _you_," said Lisette loyally. "He was defending her honor. Isn't that right, Grethe dearest?"

Grethe nodded, then shrugged. "I wasn't there for it," she admitted, "though that does seem the sort of thing he'd do."

Elise gave her a triumphant look. "But as you say, you weren't there for it. Anyway, whoever you might have been made to marry, we all know you're _really_ one of _us_. But honestly, Grethe, couldn't you have gotten it annulled when nothing came of it?"

"When nothing came of what?" asked Grethe. All the girls looked from her to Elise uneasily.

"Well, you're clearly not with child _now_," said Elise, nibbling a muffin.

"Your figure's better than it ever was!" interjected Hilda Berdasdutter, as if to lighten the insult.

"Whoever said I was with child?" asked Grethe, pretending to find it funny.

"And really, Grethe," Elise went on, ignoring her, "this sort of thing could have been hushed up if you'd only been sensible. I'm sure it has been before. And now it's all come to nothing."

"There was never anything for it to come to," said Grethe. "I was never pregnant."

"Well, thank goodness for small miracles," said Elise.

"Elise, you're being rude," said Lisette. "We can't all have our first choice." Her voice broke a little on the last word.

"But Bard _was_ my first choice," murmured Grethe.

"I don't see why," said Elise. Hilda smacked her on the arm to shut her up, and even Elise's friends seemed to feel she had gone too far.

"You don't have to," said Grethe shortly. "_You're_ not married to him. And as for all those rumors, why, I've met rich men a hundred times more lecherous than Bard. Having money doesn't automatically make you virtuous, and having no money doesn't make you a villain."

"No _money?_ Mad Bard hasn't got _anything_," said Elise nastily.

"He's got _me_," said Grethe standing up so quickly her chair fell back. Lisette stood too, and followed Grethe out of the tent.

"She's just _beastly_," Lisette said. "And I think she's been drinking."

"I know what Elise is like," said Grethe. "It's easier for her to say things like that to me now, because everyone thinks I'm a fallen woman; but I'm sure she would have thought them in any case. You needn't try to explain."

"I don't think you're a fallen woman," objected Lisette.

"Everyone thinks I married him because I had to. And perhaps everyone's right, for once: I _did_ have to marry him, or be miserable forever. And I'll tell you another thing, if Bard just wore nicer clothes and had a little money, Elise would be trying to catch his eye. Everyone would."

"Elise _has_ tried to catch his eye," muttered Lisette. "He didn't even notice. Why else do you think she's so sore?"

Grethe turned to her in astonishment. "But…"

"Oh, my dearest," said Lisette, laughing and threading her arm through Grethe's. "Mad he may be, but I can hardly think of a woman in town who hasn't worked up a lather imagining him creeping into her room at night with a knife in his teeth. D'you think we haven't _noticed_ those _hands_ of his?"

Grethe could only sputter.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! I hope you're all enjoying it!_


	14. Chapter 14

Bard was chopping wood when Grethe came and found him, her arm around the Master's niece, who stared and giggled at him before running away. He straightened and stretched and took a drink from his water skin, then offered it to Grethe.

"Bard," she said, "I know you've never entered the shooting contest before, but I think you ought to today. It's not too late to sign up, for it won't commence for another hour at least. I'm sure you could win."

"I've no desire to wedge myself in where I'm not wanted," said Bard. "That contest is for lads of your own class, not mine."

"That's not true; half the other boatmen are signed up already. Even Frain's doing it. It's open to everybody."

"I'm not everybody," said Bard, frowning. "And why should you care if I enter or not?"

"There's a cash prize, and you know we could use it."

"Aye," agreed Bard. "That we could. Is that really the reason you want me to do it?"

"Isn't it enough?" But before he could answer, she went on. "Bard, I want you to know that I'm as proud of you as I could ever think to be. And I...I want other people to see it."

Bard rolled his shoulders back, to dislodge a pool of sweat that was tickling his back. "If I entered—even if I won—it wouldn't prove anything to anyone but you."

"Perhaps not," said Grethe. "You don't have to if you don't want to. Whether you win or lose or don't enter at all won't change how proud I am of you. But I would so like to see you do it, if you're willing."

Bard had never had someone be proud of him before. And they could use the money.

"Aye, I'll do it," he said, smiling suddenly. Grethe cheered and threw her arms around him. "I'm all sweaty!" he protested, laughing and trying to dislodge her.

"What do I care?" said Grethe. "I like you sweaty." And then, standing right there in the middle of a crowd, she jumped up on her tip-toes and licked a droplet off his neck.

"And how much have you had to drink, Mistress?" he asked, willing himself not to think of her lips on his throat and shame himself in public.

"I don't need to drink to want to do that," she assured him with a sly grin that made him warm and throb down to his toes. "I'll go register you for the contest."

So it was that Bard took his place in line an hour later. He had brought his own bow and arrows as he always did when he went to the mainland, for it'd gall him to spot game and be able to do nothing about it. He advanced through the first round along with about half the contestants, and moved ten paces further from the target. Then twenty, then thirty, and forty, the group of archers dwindling each time. Finally he competed against a single archer from North Ithilien. Behind his back he knew that wagers were being laid, although he could not begin to guess whether even the chance to triumph over a foreigner was enough to make the townspeople bet on him. But he ignored the increasingly excited shouts and comments, just as he ignored the Master who sat watching sourly from his tent on one side of the shooting-ground, and Grethe who chewed her cheek on the other side. Bard's mind was as quiet and still as a forest glade in the heat of the afternoon.

When the Gondorian archer's arrow struck the line of the second ring at two hundred paces, and Bard's struck the center, a great cheer went up, and noise and thought once more intruded. The Gondorian, a ranger named Lanwyn, pumped his opponent's hand enthusiastically and invited Bard to join him and his men at supper. Grethe ran onto the field and hopped around him like a little bird, until he slung one arm around her waist and lifted her against him. When she brazenly kissed him before the eyes of all the town, he kissed her back without a thought for modesty.

"If you'll but be proud of me," he whispered in her shining hair, "I'll try hard to deserve it."

The Master handed over the little pouch of silver coins with ill-grace while his attendants scowled on. Then supper was served, and Bard and Grethe sat at a long trestle table with the company from the South; and because they did not know he was a wretch and a disgrace, they were more than happy to toast him and his pretty wife, and compliment the stag he'd shot, and joke and laugh without a single jibe hidden in the words.

And after several cups of mead had been drunk, Grethe turned to the Lanwyn and said proudly, "My husband has the finest voice in all of Laketown, and songs such as your own Steward might be glad to hear." Bard demurred but the men insisted on hearing him sing something in the local tradition, and so he sang to them of Raven who taunted Smaug until he slithered back into his hole. And as had never happened in the whole of his life, they all cheered and plied him with drink when he was done, and asked for another.

"Very well," he said, "if you'll agree to repay me in kind. I've lived in Laketown all my life, and a song I've never heard would be worth its weight in gold to me. What kind of song would you like?"

"A love song!" chirped Grethe.

"If it must be a love song, let it be a tragic one!" yelled Lisette from down the table.

The men at the table agreed, laughing: "We live in the forest with naught but our own imaginings to warm us at night. A tragic love song'll do admirably for our purposes."

"Then I'll tell you of Raven's forbears," he said, "for a more wretched tale I do not know." He stood, amid cheers and toasts, and began.

_"I'll sing to you of the soot black birds_

_on Ravenhill, on Erebor!_

_Offspring of two whose sorry tale_

_is lost to all but dusty lore._

_._

_Their sire was not bird but man,_

_a hunter swift and keen of eye._

_Black as the moonless night his hair,_

_swift as the wind his darts did fly._

_._

_But one bird was safe from his bow:_

_a nuthatch who his hill did share,_

_whose nest was high above his bed._

_She, and she only, did he spare._

_._

_For he had known her from the egg_

_and fed her scraps from his own hand._

_Her eye was bright, her feathers shone_

_She was for long his only friend._

_._

_He lived alone, alone he hunted_

_for years before another soul_

_climbed up to him beneath the moonlight_

_and tarried with him on his knoll._

_._

_She was a maid with nut-brown hair_

_whose glance filled him with sharp delight._

_She lay with him beneath the moon,_

_and vanished in the morning light._

_._

_All day he sought her, fleet and eager_

_up the hill and down he ran_

_no maiden was there to be found_

_Until the moon rose high again._

_._

_Then swift she came to his hill laughing!_

_Melting in his arms she lay,_

_lingering with him in the starlight,_

_once more at sunrise gone away._

_._

_For full a year, they kept their tryst,_

_renewed at night, paused at day's breaking._

_The sight of her fair form alone_

_did make him fall at her feet, aching._

_._

_And in the light of day he hunted,_

_till shadows drew out long and black._

_Then he sat and fed his pretty nuthatch_

_'til his love came laughing back._

_._

_After a season to their joy_

_the lass's belly came to swell._

_Now every night they loved another_

_whose coming did her form foretell._

_._

_But in that year a famine loomed_

_that e'en the hunter could not prevent._

_He went without to feed his dear ones_

_until the mountain's game was spent._

_._

_His precious wife came now to sicken;_

_her belly and her cheeks grew thin._

_He feared not only for the lass,_

_but for the babe she bore within._

_._

_Weeping, he climbed up to the nuthatch_

_who the famine'd wasted to a wreck._

_She gazed on him full trustfully_

_till, grieving, did he wring her neck._

_._

_'Twas only when he lifted her_

_he saw what she'd hid in the nest._

_Now wracked with guilt at what he'd stolen,_

_he warmed her egg at his own breast._

_._

_Salted by his tears she roasted,_

_mourned by the hunter, sad and grim._

_He waited in the lowering dusk_

_for his loved one to return to him._

_._

_Alas, now in the smoke there rising,_

_he saw a figure sweet and young!_

_His dearest wife appeared in vision—_

_but stricken dead, her fair neck wrung!_

_._

_Now the hunter knew he'd slain them both!_

_He screamed and raged; his clothes he rent._

_He beat his brains upon the mountain_

_Till he fell dead, his last breath spent._

_._

_Before his blood had time to cool_

_a chirping sounded in his vest._

_The nuthatch's egg began to quicken—_

_at last broke free upon his chest._

_**.**_

_Feathered and flighted like its dam,_

_yet sootblack as its father's hair;_

_the hatchling, orphaned from the start,_

_and seeking comfort, found it nowhere._

_**.**_

_Swift as a thought it took to wing,_

_and journeyed 'cross the sky alone._

_It searched the cold and empty skies;_

_at last, despairing, it flew back home._

_**.**_

_And ever since it has cawed and cried_

_on Ravenhill! On Erebor!_

_Its voice, a hoarse and grieving sound,_

_shall haunt th' unhappy hill ever more."_

All the women who had gathered close to hear wept and dabbed their eyes, while the men clapped and whistled.

Then they sang their own songs, epics of heroes long dead and of battlegrounds long cold. By the fifth or sixth such song Grethe was yawning into her mead, and so Bard toasted the southern travelers one last time, guided his wife down the torchlit path to the boat, and rowed her home. And all the way she hummed the song of the raven-haired man and the nuthatch.

"I knew you would win," she said smugly as he lifted her out of the boat at the dock. "What are you going to do with the prize money?"

"Buy you strings of pearls and rubies to wear," said he, sweeping her up in his arms to carry home, the rucksack full of her day's purchases on his back.

"Bard!"

"And a dress of brown silk with yellow flowers. And a trained squirrel on a lead."

"A squirrel!" Her laughter echoed around the deserted canal.

He nudged the door open with his boot, and deposited her at the foot of the ladder. She was too wobbly to climb it without his steadying hand on her waist, from sleepiness or mead or both. He left her at her door and climbed up to his loft.

"Bard, I need you!" she called before he had even had a chance to undress. He climbed back down obligingly and went to her room.

"What troubles you, milady?" In the flickering candlelight, he noticed that she'd shed her clothes down to shift and stays.

"I can't undo my laces," she said. "I'm too sleepy."

Bard's throat tightened. "Aye, that is a hardship. Did you perchance knot them too tight?"

"Yes," she said, taking him firmly by the hand and pulling him into the room.

"And why did you do a thing like that?"

"That's my own business, Bard the Bowman," she said, falling forward so that he had no choice but to catch her. "Will you help me or won't you?"

"I haven't much experience with lacings of that particular type," he said.

"It's no different from breeches," smiled Grethe. "Here, I'll show you." She reached for the fastening of his pants.

"Easy, lass!" he exclaimed, leaping backward.

"When you shot that target at two hundred paces," Grethe confided, putting her hand on his arm, "my heart nearly jumped straight out of my mouth."

"I'm glad you were pleased," said Bard.

"You looked like a king."

"A penniless king."

"A handsome one."

Bard let out a short laugh. "Are you sure you weren't looking at Lanwyn? He's likelier than I."

"That is a lie. No one is likelier than you. And I'm not the only one who thinks it."

"You've drunk a great deal, Mistress," he said.

"I've drunk but three cups of mead over the course of a whole night," said his wife. "You think it's drink makes me say these things? You're short-sighted, for an archer. Now come help me with this, for it's unhealthy to sleep in stays." She took his hands and positioned them on the knot. He knew that he should leave. He should run from the room right this very minute. If only his legs might work properly.

Instead, Bard began to fumble with the knot as she had asked, a guilty thrill going through him every time his hands grazed the flesh of her warm white bosom. The way she swayed and pressed against him made it almost impossible to keep from tossing her on the bed and to hell with the loophole in the marital contract. He suspected she was moving around deliberately, to prevent this knot from ever coming undone.

But he managed it, finally, and no thanks to her. He was ready to bolt from the room so he could perform the usual maneuver to relieve his discomfort, and go to sleep and forget all that had happened, but she took his hand before he could move.

"Will you leave your wife without even a good-night kiss?" she asked softly. "You shot well today, and should be rewarded."

"I have my reward already," he said desperately.

"And I it was who convinced you to shoot," she said. "Should I not have some reward also?" She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it; then she lowered it to her breast, her eyes not leaving his. Her defiant gaze made his head swim and his knees buckle. He knew he must not weaken, not now of all times, so close to the end of their year, but—!

Bard was not strong enough to prevent himself bending forward to kiss her. He was not strong enough to keep his hand from sliding down between shift and skin. And when she opened her mouth to whisper his name against his lips, he was not strong enough to remember why all this should be denied him. He curved his free hand around her buttocks and lifted her against him, and tasted her lips and tongue and throat and the tops of her breasts. Her panting breath bred fire in his blood, and he had no longer any thought of waiting.

It was as he was just easing her down onto the bed that Da came home, singing loudly a bawdy song about dragons. Bard froze, his hand hovering over her stays. Grethe saw the look on his face, turned her head and screamed into her pillow.

Bard climbed off his wife and stood looking down at her. She propped herself up on her elbows and glared at Bard, as if the interruption had been his fault.

"Sleep well," he croaked, and fled the room while he still could.

When through the wall he heard Grethe tossing and shifting restlessly in her bed, making stifled sounds to herself, Bard did not have to be told what she was doing. With her sly defiant smile before his eyes, he turned his face to the wall and did the same.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing!_


	15. Chapter 15

The following afternoon while Bard was out on the water, Grethe was startled from her sewing by a pounding at the door. When she went to answer it, she found no one outside; but a notice had been nailed to the splintery wood, all about shipping requirements and licenses, which she read with a creeping sense of unease.

Bard came home late, for he'd started late, and washed up for supper. Before he could sit to eat his stew, Grethe handed him the notice. He read it quickly, his face growing thunderous, and then slammed it down on the table so the bowls jumped.

He rose and put on his coat. "I've to fetch my Da before he's too far gone with drink to read," he said.

"Bard? What's it about?" asked Grethe.

"The Master's decided to ruin me," he said grimly, stepping out into the dark.

Half an hour later Bard and Rancid Borin—who was only a little drunk, and clearly not as much as he wanted to be—talked at the table while Grethe sat listening and sewing at the fireside.

"It's your performance at the Festival what's brung it on," said Borin, shaking his head. "Winnin' the contest was one thing, but what with the way she was hanging off you like a—" He jerked his head at Grethe.

"Careful, Da," said Bard mildly.

"Did I not warn you, son? Did I not foresee—"

"We'll talk of the license or we'll not talk at all," Bard interrupted. "And I tell you this, Da, that if you leave me to manage this alone I'll change the lock on the door, and you can sleep at The Windfall for all I care."

"D'you threaten _me?_" Fearfully Grethe looked up at Borin, who seemed about to hit his own son. Bard always looked younger beside his malnourished and sallow-faced father. Tonight he looked easily the more adult of the two. She thought of her own dear Papa, who would have denied himself anything under the sun to provide for his family, and her heart clenched sorrowfully.

"Yes," answered Bard resolutely. "Now let's get on with it. The wording of the notice is that as I've taken on the better part of the business, but the license is in your name, I'm no more than a smuggler and a law-breaker. I have till the end of the quarter to file for a license."

"That should be enough time, if only Perce will give us a bit of a hand."

"I've already spoken to Percy, and he said that barge licenses have a weight requisite now, and not just distance."

"And how far behind are you on weight for the year?"

"Half my income is from ferryin' the Master's empty barrels back up to Mirkwood," he said, "and those weigh nothin' at all. It could take me eight months to catch up, and I'm not given more than two. I haven't the contracts for it, Da."

"You'll have to take mine," said his father.

"It won't be enough," said Bard. "If I don't move two tons per day for the next two months, I'll be sunk."

Grethe gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Two _tons?_

"Two tons of _what?_" Borin asked scornfully. "Two tons of dreams, eh, lad?"

"Two tons of whatever I can find," said Bard. "I've thought it over. You'll take over all my contracts and manage them. Whatever you or I've got that's half a ton or heavier, I'll take on the Sindra. You'll have to sell the other contracts to Wulf."

"Fat Ogan's more reliable," objected Borin.

"Aye, but Ogan'll keep whatever contracts he gets, and Wulf won't. When all this is done I hope still to have some customers left."

"And what'll you ferry to make up the weight?" asked Borin. "Eh? You've still not answered that."

"I'll ferry barrels o' water to the Landing and back. That should take care of the weight _and_ the distance requirements."

"You'll break your back, son."

"What other choice've I got?"

* * *

From that day, the whole rhythm of their life was upended. Even before this emergency Bard had worked longer and harder days than most, and now his work was tripled. Because he'd been forced to sell his current contracts, and not to take on any new ones, he was working for free. They could ill afford it. Only the silver he'd won shooting and whatever Grethe could earn would see them through the first of October.

Borin, prevented by necessity from spending a single cent of the business's income on drink, managed to remain on his feet for four days before the shakes became overpowering. Fortunately he had managed to move most of their existing contracts by that time, and no new ones came in, for word was spreading that the Master had pulled the law on Bard. The other bargemen well knew that they were vulnerable to the same law that was being used against Bard, if the Master ever took a dislike to them. Furthermore, it was an open secret that nothing but Bard's conduct at the Flight Festival could account for this.

"He done this town proud," said one old line-merchant. "Ithilien archers is the best there is, an' they was drinkin' 'is health an' all, an' carryin' tales o' Laketown's greatness back to Gondor. It's a shoddy shame, repayin' 'im thisaway."

"With that longbow in his hand he was the spittin' image of Girion in the big tapestry at the Records Hall," said a fishwife who was past her first youth. "I never seen a bearing like that on a lad as young as him. That wife o' his has done him good."

"Did you _hear_ his song about the nuthatch?" swooned lasses at all stages of society. "His _voice_, oh, _Bard_…"

Some of this reached the Master's ears, and he worried that perhaps he'd acted in haste and would repent at leisure. Rather less of it reached Grethe's ears, for she was trapped inside trying to spoon gruel into Borin's mouth, and cleaning up after him when he vomited it back up, and preventing him by any means from running out the door and spending their precious pennies at The Windfall.

Not a word reached Bard's ears, nor would he have cared if it had. His days had become a torment, with no end in view.

He would rise several hours before dawn to the smell of cooking porridge, for somehow Grethe was always awake and busy before him. After he'd bolted down his breakfast, he would accept a package of food and a kiss from Grethe, and hurry to the dock to have his cargo weighed. If it had been Sorgen supervising the measurements, he wouldn't have bothered to weigh the barrels after the first few times, for they were never emptied or changed. But for a license Bard had to deal with the customs master Halden, who was not inclined to do Bard any favors.

After the cargo had been weighed, Bard would pole it out of the canals and onto the Lake. When the water got too deep for poling, he rowed. He would ferry his cargo to the Landing, which was the furthest point Bard could get to that didn't go upstream or force him to waste precious minutes navigating the old pilings of Esgaroth. At the Landing, one of Halden's men would be waiting to weigh the cargo and stamp a form. Then Bard would load the weighed barrels back onto the _Sindra_, return to the docks for Halden to weigh his cargo again, stamp another form, and begin the whole thing over.

In order to keep to his schedule, Bard had to make four discrete trips every day, with not a single day's rest in the whole two months. So heavily weighted, the _Sindra_ rode low and sluggish in the water, and the muscles of Bard's back and arms quickly developed radiating spots of burning pain that never went away, even when he slept. The food Grethe handed him in the morning was the only food he would eat all day. He suspected she was giving him more than she kept back for her and Da together, and it still wasn't enough for his need. When he asked her about it, she informed him that Sally or one of the Bettines came by most days with extra provisions, and not to worry about her—as if he had any choice in that matter.

By the time he'd finished his fourth trip of the day, usually well after nightfall, he would tie up the _Sindra_ and stumble home for a few hours' sleep before he had to begin again. After the first week, he stopped changing out of his clothes to sleep. After the second, he no longer made it up to his loft, but instead slept in a roll of blankets by the fire. In the minutes before he lost consciousness, Grethe would massage his neck and shoulders, but the persistent burning ache never left him.

What drove him to distraction was the _pointlessness_ of the whole enterprise. The only thing heavy enough to make up the weight requirement was water, and that was the one thing the people in Laketown needed no more of. He was losing out on lucrative contracts and forcing Grethe to stay at home minding Da like a nursemaid, rowing this useless cargo back and forth across the Lake, and he would never see a single penny from it. It would likely lose him customers in the long run. If not for the silver he'd won at the festival, he and Grethe would have starved.

* * *

After only a week of this, Grethe thought she could not bear another minute. But every time she wanted to give up, she thought of Bard, endlessly dragging that barge across the lake, his muscles screaming in agony, too tired even to sing. And she found it in her to carry on.

She always drank several large cups of water before going to bed, so that her bladder would rouse her before Bard got up. She would dress in the dark and stumble down the ladder to start breakfast while Bard still slept. The smell of porridge woke him, and he would untangle himself from his bed-clothes and trudge to the table. They were usually too exhausted for much talk; Bard because he could never sleep long enough to recover from his long days' hard labor, Grethe because she was often up at least once every night cleaning the vomit from Borin's mouth, or trying to give him some tonic to halt his tremors. In the daytime, she must alternate nursing Borin and, when he managed to sleep or stay quiet, working on whatever little jobs she had been employed to do for the townspeople.

Often, Borin was querulous and belligerent, finding fault with everything she did. Other times, he was too busy trembling in a corner and pissing himself to cause her much trouble, other than that required to keep him clean and make him as comfortable as possible.

But Borin was still getting liquor somewhere, though Grethe never knew where. While he was sleeping she combed the house from roof to floorboards, knocking on every wall and investigating every closed container. She turned up nothing, yet Borin still became at least partially intoxicated at irregular intervals, perhaps once or twice a week. Those were the worst days, because she could never be sure what he would do, and had to watch him every second, sacrificing her small income to keep him from doing himself harm, or making a play for the coins she kept in her apron and running down to The Windfall.

Seven weeks into that terrible period, Borin had a heaving spell in the night, and she got no more than half an hour's sleep for tending him. She managed a short nap after Bard left, but then she heard Borin banging around the hearth and jolted awake. She patted her apron pocket reflexively, then did it again.

The coins were gone.

It was only a few pennies, the last of her earnings from a set of shirts she'd made. And it had to last her—last all of them—till she could be paid for an embroidery job, in two days more.

"Borin," she said, the calm of her voice belying the undercurrent of rage and helplessness that never left her at all anymore. "Did you happen to see four pennies?"

He only snorted and spat in the fire.

"They were here in my apron," she said, standing. "I felt for them before I went to sleep, and I felt for them after. They are not on the floor. Have you seen them?"

"So what if I have," he grunted. "You aren't mistress in my house."

"They were not your pennies to take," she said. "Please return them, or your son'll have nothing to eat tomorrow."

"I's all his doing; so why should I have to pay for it?" said Borin. "Why should I suffer, eh?"

"What's all his doing?"

"_THE_ _LICENSE,"_ Borin shouted, his voice rising with shocking abruptness. Grethe took a step backward. "It wouldn'a come up if he hadn't been sniffing around your skirts like a rat. I told him. I _told_ him no good would come of it, and I was _RIGHT_."

"Please give me back my money," said Grethe. She did not like to admit it, but she was afraid. Afraid of the Master, afraid of her own imperfect ability to keep them afloat till the license came through, afraid that Bard's strength would fail.

Afraid of Borin.

But she could not do without those pennies. It did not enter Grethe's thinking that in her old life, she would never even have noticed the loss of four pennies; that she could end this all by having the marriage quietly annulled, and seeking help from one of her old friends. The only thought that could find purchase in her mind was _I must have those pennies or Bard'll go hungry_.

Borin would have to sleep sooner or later, and she could find the pennies then. They must be on his person somewhere. Borin's sudden movement almost eluded her, but she realized what he was doing and got between him and the door just in time.

"Outer my way, whore," he snarled. Grethe paled, but held her ground. "I'm of Girion's line, and what are _you?_ Stay away from my son, or I'll make sure you do! Ye've no business breathin' his air!"

"I'm his _wife!_" she shouted, provoked, and regretted it at once.

"Yer nothin' but _MERCHANT TRASH!_" he bellowed, and struck her across the face.

Grethe was knocked to the floor, breathless. By the time she turned around, the front door was banging and Borin was gone, with all the money she had.

She tried to rise to her feet but found her legs wouldn't support her. _Bard's been through much worse_, she thought, frantically willing her legs to stop trembling and support her weight. _Bard's going through worse now. It's none so bad_. But she could not make herself stand. After a while, she realized it was because she'd never been struck before.

She knelt on the floor for almost an hour. Then she finally got up, and straightened the room. She was very cold, shaking with it, in spite of the muggy day. She could not seem to get warm.

Just after sundown, Borin came careening home. Grethe heard him coming, and stood by the fire with Bard's hunting knife clenched in one fist; but he just clambered up the ladder and passed out in her bed without seeing her.

Bard came home even later than usual.

"_Sindra_ was startin' to drag wi' algae," he mumbled in explanation, crashing to the floor. "'Ad to scrape 'er down." He was asleep a minute later.

Grethe was so tired she wanted nothing more than to lie down and cry, and then sleep for a year. But she could not. She had food for Bard's breakfast and dinner tomorrow, and after that there would be nothing left to give him. If he could not eat, he would lose a day or more on the barge, and he would not get the license. If he had no license, he could not work, and if he could not work…

Grethe repositioned Bard so that he would not sleep on his arm all night and wake up with it useless, and pulled his blankets out from underneath to cover him. She made sure the fire was warm enough, climbed up to check on Borin (who was snoring heavily and would sleep till noon, small blessing), threw on her cloak, and went out.

It was very late, but she could not help that. She must do something. She scurried along the dark boardwalk to Sorgen's house.

To her surprise, there was a light still on. She knocked on the door quietly, and a murmur of talk inside was abruptly cut off. Sorgen's face peeked out the window at her, and he unbolted the door and pulled her inside.

"Why, if it en't Mistress Grethe," said a voice she did not recognize. "You won't know me, lass. Percy's the name, an 'twas me stamped your marital contract—just past a year now, en't it? An' how're you keeping afloat?"

Grethe burst out sobbing.

"Beggin' your pardon, Mistress," he said anxiously, peering at her. "I'd best be...be going. Thanks for the ale and talk, Sorgen."

"Aye, any time," said Sorgen, patting Grethe on the back. Percy left, and Sorgen steered Grethe to a stool by the fire. He pressed a mug of warm sweetened milk into her hands. She sipped it, realized it was the first thing she'd had to eat all day, and then gulped it. Sorgen filled it for her three more times from a pot on the stove, and when all the milk was gone, he gave her a bannock to eat.

"Now, whyn't ye tell me what happened to give you that bruise?" he said, settling himself opposite her. "Shall I wake Sal to have a look at it?"

"Bruise?" said Grethe. "I don't…" Her fingers flew to her cheek and she winced in pain. The flesh was puffy and tender. "Is it very dark?"

"It's noticeable," said Sorgen cautiously. "Now, lass, I know I've no call to meddle in another couple's affairs, but if Bard's so far gone he'll strike you—"

"No, no, Bard would never hit me," said Grethe impatiently. "When would he find the time?"

"Well, it did seem unlikely, but ye never know what a man's got inside at any one moment. If not Bard, then who?"

"Oh, it...it doesn't matter."

"Grethe," said Sorgen in just the tone Papa used to to use when he'd caught her in a lie, "I was dandling grandbabies on my knee when you were still sucking down mother's milk. I stood witness at your wedding. Tell me who hit you—though I think I can guess," he added in a dark undertone.

"It was Borin," she whispered. Sorgen's fingers twitched. "Please don't tell anyone," she said frantically. "Not even Sally. Please, _please_, Sorgen. I wouldn't even have come here if I'd realized he left a mark. Bard mustn't know of it, we're so close to the end! If Bard can only keep his strength up for another week, we'll have the license and everything will be all right! But please don't tell a soul, _please!_"

Sorgen handed her another bannock.

"Aye," he relented.

"Not even Sally?"

"Aye," he said again. "But if I'm to swear secrecy, you must at least tell me what you come here for."

"I wanted to see if I could sell you this," she said, pulling her yellow silk hair ribbon from her pocket. "It would look pretty in Sally's hair. I just need to get through another week, is all."

"And why come now, in the dark of night?"

"I need the money right away. After Bard's breakfast and dinner we'll be out of food. I'm so sorry to come to you like this, I know it's horribly indecent, but I just...I…"

Sorgen understood—more, perhaps, than she wanted him to.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "I don't think that ribbon is Sally's best color, so I won't be takin' it from you. But we've got an extra bag of oats that's on the edge o' turning. We were going to throw it out, but perhaps it's best if you throw it out for us."

"Oh, Sorgen—you must let me give you something—"

"Well, some day this summer, you come by here an surprise me with a clutch o' wildflowers. At my age, people don't give surprise presents anymore and I've kinder got to miss it."

"All right. Thank you, Sorgen. And you won't tell Sally about the…?"

"Not a word," said Sorgen, helping her to her feet. "Now go on home and get a bit o' rest, there's a good lass." He kissed her forehead and patted her back, and opened the door for her. "Oh," he added as she went out, "and happy anniversary."

* * *

By the final week of the quarter, Bard was more dead than alive. He could not move his arms except in the motions of poling and rowing. His head throbbed perpetually, his back wouldn't straighten all the way, and his hands shook when they weren't wrapped around a bargepole. He had stopped feeling pain as pain, which was a good thing because it had soaked through all the layers of him like a winter rain soaks through clothes, permeating his limbs and his bones and his thoughts.

He was not going to make it.

"I have three day's worth left to do and two days to do it in," he said to Grethe. "I'll have to work through the night."

"Oh, Bard," she said. She seemed to have a terrible crick in her neck, for she'd kept her head turned to the side for the last few days. He was starting to forget what the left side of her face looked like.

"I'll give you extra dinner, then. Bard, you _will_ be careful?"

"Aye," he said. "Sorgen's promised he'll keep watch when I'm out after dark."

"I wish…" But she did not say what she wished, just ruffled his hair and went back to wrapping his supper.

Those last two days were as bad as all the previous months put together. When the sun went down, and he had six loads yet to ferry, Bard almost cried; but the tears would not come. His face was frozen into its position, his hands were frozen onto his oars, even his heart seemed iced over in his chest.

By the time the sun was rising on his last day, Bard had entered a curiously restful state. The dawn was beautiful, like nothing he'd ever seen. The sun rose for rich and poor alike, yet when did the rich ever see it?

Trying to change the position of his hands on the pole on his third load from last, Bard realized that they had been turned to stone without his noticing. Was he a troll, calcifying in the sunrise? He tried to turn his head, but couldn't. He could only look dead ahead, interminably poling, while the whole world turned to ash.

With two loads to go, Bard knew that he would never forgive the Master for this. He would never forgive him for what he'd done to Grethe. And he could no longer pretend it wasn't happening.

Bard had his form stamped on the last load at the Landing as the light was beginning to turn golden.

"Leave the barrels here," said the customs man, moved to pity by the pathetic picture Bard made. "Go on home to your wife. You can get the barrels back tomorrow. I'll even empty 'em for you."

Bard gripped his pole for one last time and began to drag himself back across the lake. The _Sindra_ was light on the water, so light she skittered and danced underneath him. Everything was turning golden, burning like the sun. Everything was burning. Laketown was on fire.

_The streams shall run in gladness, the lakes shall shine and burn…_

The Lake had turned to molten gold, and Grethe was trapped in the middle of it, running toward him down the dock, heedless of the hellfire beneath her feet.

_Grethe_, he tried to shout, to warn her, but leathery wings burst from her shoulders and she soared up into the sky, golden flames belching forth from her screeching maw…

* * *

Grethe ran to the docks just in time to see Bard collapse, striking his head on the dock before sliding beneath the surface. The Lake swallowed him easily, the bloody streaks his hands left on the bargepole the only sign that he had ever existed at all.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! What do you think of these developments?_


	16. Chapter 16

For the second time in his life, Bard had someone to pull him back from death's brink.

For the second time in his life, it was Grethe.

* * *

He woke thirsty, and she was there, dripping water into his mouth. Then he slept.

He woke shivering, and she climbed into the bed next to him, her naked flesh hot against his. Then he slept.

He woke hungry, and she spooned porridge into his mouth. Then he slept.

At last he woke living, and looked to the warm body stretched beside him, pink and peaceful in slumber. And he thought, _I could sleep_.

* * *

Grethe rose slowly from a dream in which the bubbles of the warm Lake tickled against her legs, the warmth of the summer sun bathed her breast and face. It was a pleasant dream. But she could not keep it.

When she slowly blinked open her eyes she saw that she lay in her own bed, in the pre-dawn. The air was sharp and cold, but her legs and her breast were warm, because Bard was covering them with various parts of his own naked body. Also, fast asleep, he was poking her in the hip.

Grethe found that she did not care to sleep anymore, and that Bard had had more than enough rest over the last three days. As his doctor, she felt more than qualified to make this judgment. As his wife, she felt several other things besides.

She reached between them to shift the implement that was presently bruising her hip. Then, since she was down there, she thought she might as well feel around to be sure everything was where it had been last time she checked.

Bard came awake with a yelp.

"Grethe," he gasped, "you're…"

"Mm," she said. "Happy anniversary, darling." She kissed him, and said, "Actually, our anniversary came and went, some time ago."

"Did it really?" He seemed truly surprised.

"Aye, and you were so busy working yourself to death you didn't notice. To be quite fair to you, neither did I. And you have your bargeman's license, so I suppose it was worth it. And here we are, still married, just as I told you we'd be."

"We're still married," he echoed.

"And have been for two weeks and a year."

An expression of wonderment and disbelief passed over his face. He reached up to tuck a curl behind her ear, and traced his finger down her cheek and neck and shoulder. His eyes dropped to her bare breasts, then flicked back up to her face.

Then back down.

And suddenly he had flipped her onto her back and was pressing kisses to her skin, tasting all the parts of her he had tasted before, her lips and the spot behind her ear, the dip of her throat and the hard line of her collarbone. Then he was tasting the parts he'd never laid eyes on, the crease under her arm and the swelling of her breasts and the curving fold where they met her ribs. Grethe watched his black hair sweep lower down her body, brushing over the places where his saliva lingered, making her shiver and quake. He looked up at her, questioningly, his eyes wide and uncertain. She saw the muscles of his right arm flex and felt, a moment later, warm fingers sliding slickly between her thighs.

Grethe's legs fell apart and her hands made fists in the bedclothes.

"Bard…" she moaned.

"Am I hurting you?"

She shook her head vigorously. "You're...you're…"

His fingers were moving faster, the middle one curling deeper than the others, till it had slipped right inside her; and then with the palm of his hand he rubbed and pressed, and she was coiling up tight around him.

A second finger joined the first, and the coil released.

Grethe throbbed around his hand, her back arching, one arm flung over her face. Her legs quivered and shook, and all too soon Bard was taking his hands away from her. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and sucked ponderously at them.

"Bard! I'm not washed!" she cried out in dismay.

But the look in his eyes was not one of displeasure. "I've had naught to eat but porridge in two months," he said hoarsely. "Would you deny a bit of savor to a starvin' man?"

"I'll deny you nothing. Bard, make me your wife."

"Aye, lass," he said, and got himself between her legs before they'd even stopped trembling. He bent over her so that his hair tickled her breasts and his breath steamed on her ribcage, and she felt a swift impossible fulness, tight and heavy between her thighs. He thrust twice and spent himself inside her, his face hidden in her neck, his yell vibrating up through her jaw.

He collapsed on top of her, gasping. Weak sunlight broke through the window and lay upon his lean-muscled shoulder. Grethe traced it with her fingers, and turned her head and skimmed her lips along it, and along his jaw and the sweet curl of his ear. Bard's arms went around her suddenly, squeezing her close. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Still buried in her, he began to come to life again, and moved his hips gently. Grethe made a little noise in the back of her throat, and Bard's movements increased.

"You are mine," whispered Grethe in his ear, "and I mean to keep you."

"You have me, lass; for I do love you so." He kissed her then, and did not stop till he had spent a second time and his seed spilled out of her. They lay quiet together, husband and wife.

* * *

Bard finally left the bed when it was either that or piss himself. He went downstairs to urinate for a solid ninety seconds, and when he turned around there was Grethe, standing on the hearth with a cloth in her hand, a bucket by her feet, and not a stitch on.

"I bathed you as best I could when you were asleep," she said, "but it's time we did the job properly. Come here and take that shirt off."

She bathed him, even his hair, until two months' stink had been soaped and rinsed away. Then he bathed her in a fresh bucket, entranced by the sight of cool streams of water trickling down her breasts and disappearing in the curling brown hair between her legs, and the way her nipples tightened and puckered with cold.

"Bard, d'you want me to freeze to death?" she chastised. "Are you going to stand there dreaming or are you going to warm me?"

"How shall I warm you?" he asked with a grin, dropping the cloth in the bucket with a plop.

"You know very well how," said Grethe, pulling him to her.

* * *

Because the matter of the license had been up in the air Bard had no new contracts for two days after he rose from the sickbed. During that period Da never came to the house, and if Bard had not been kept so busy making constant love to his wife he might have thought that odd.

But on the third day Wulf came by with several contracts he was willing to sell to Bard at a very good price, and he was back on the barge. At least now he was able to go home as soon as the sun went down, and rise with it, too. And if he never wanted to see the _Sindra_ again, at least the cargo she carried was of a reasonable weight once more, and due on a reasonable timetable.

And when the sun _did_ go down, he would walk whistling home for a bite of dinner which was, more often than not, interrupted by more urgent matters of kisses and caresses and fumblings through layers of clothing. His loft was given over to storage, and he slept now in Grethe's bed. Often two or three times in a night they would reach for each other, and stopped not because they were sated but because they had had fallen asleep.

* * *

When Bard went round the Records Hall to pick up his license, it was Percy who stamped and released the official copy to be held by the licensee.

"No one else would," he said. "I may be only a clerk but I've worked here since the auld Master went, an' I know things as would curl your hair. They can't be rid o' me. You need a bit of something filed, lad, you come to me first."

"Thank you," said Bard. "I will." He turned to go.

"Bard..." said Percy, and something in his voice made Bard turn to him uneasily. "I've maybe no call to say it, for it's not me as knows what goes on in another fellow's marriage, but…"

"What is it, Percy?"

"I know you were working yourself half to death, and I know how rough it was on you. We all know, don't think we don't. It was cruel o' the Master pullin' the law on you, and that's no lie." He hesitated.

"I'm listening," said Bard.

"Not one lass in a hundred would do as your Mistress did, were they in her place. An' her comin' where she came from, an' all… Well, you'll pardon me for sayin', she's not from our class, an' she'll not understand a thrashing the way another woman might. And when she was workin' so hard, at that, and doin' all she could for you. It's cruel, lad, and I don't mind tellin' you so. An' that's all I'll say about it."

"What do you mean?" said Bard, mystified.

"I've maybe said too much. But I'll say also that if you wanted no one to notice it you'd have hid it more."

"Percy, _what do you mean?_" Bard asked again, a chill sweeping over him.

"I'm talkin' of the mark ye gave her, lad, square on her face. Now I do know times was hard for you—"

"What mark?"

"A hand-print, dark as storm-clouds, in just your size," said Percy. Bard backed away from him quickly. "Only don't think she asked me to broach it, for she done no such thing. I say it myself, lad. I say it myself!" His voice faded as Bard sprinted through the web of boardwalks, pulse pumping in his ears. He burst into The Windfall and crashed through the tables to Da, who was bent over a tankard of ale.

"'Ello, sonny," Da said. "Come to join your old father in a pint?"

Bard swept the tankard off the bartop and onto the floor. Da stumbled to his feet, furious.

"Have ye lost your mind, boy?" he yelled. Bard did not answer, but took him by the collar and dragged him from the bar. He did not want to do this where any could see.

He did not want to have to do this at all.

Borin had worked himself into a fine temper by the time Bard had gotten him home. Grethe looked up from the fire, startled at the noise.

"Grethe, would you please nip down to Sally's for that poultice she promised for my hands? I've a few business matters to discuss with my Da, here."

"But the stew…"

"I'll mind the stew," he said. "I'll come for you in an hour or two."

She looked at him indecisively, her ladle suspended over the stew-pot.

"All right, then," she said, hanging the ladle up and taking off her apron. Bard held on to his struggling, swearing Da until she had put on her cloak and gone out.

"Did you hit my wife?" Bard asked, the second the door had closed on Grethe. Da blanched, and stepped away. "Did you, Da?"

"What's she been tellin' you about me?" said Da. "What's she said?"

"Did you hit her?"

"She stole from me," said Da petulantly. "She'd no call to do as she did."

"I'll ask you again, Da, an' you'll answer me fast and true. Did you hit my wife?"

Da folded his arms and glared. He would not answer, but Bard required none: the answer was written in Da's guilty eyes and the defiant set of his mouth, and in all that Bard had ever known of his father. Rancid Borin had beaten his son too many times to count, until Bard learned to get out of the way, and never once had he hit him back.

But now he did, a blunt merciless blow across the cheek. "How many times?" he shouted in Da's face. "How many times did you hit her?"

"Just once—just once I remember," gasped Da, reeling backward till he tripped over a stool and went sprawling. Bard picked him up by the collar.

"You'll never lay a hand to her again, understand?"

"She stole from me—she did!"

"I _don't care!_" roared Bard. "You'll never lay a hand on her, and you'll never drink another drop!"

"That woman's ruined you," grumbled Da. "She's a whore and nothin' but merchant trash!"

"She's my _family_, and the _only family I want!_"

Bard did not expect Da to crumple up before his eyes, but in a moment Da was clinging to his son's coat, weeping and moaning. "I knew she'd turn you against me," he wailed. "I knew she would, I knew it—"

Bard pushed his father away in disgust. "You can come here to sleep at night," he said. "You'll sleep in the woodshed; I'll be sure food's left for you, and blankets and a brazier to keep the ice off. You'll not come near the place while Grethe's home alone. I'm changing the locks and I'm callin' on all our associates to inform 'em you've given up the business to me for good and all. If you try to tell them otherwise, I'll have you committed to the Cages for striking another man's wife."

"I'll not be shut away in the woodshed like a dog waiting to be put down!" hollered Da.

"Then you'll sleep outside and starve." He dragged his father out of the house and flung him into the woodshed, where he crouched and gibbered miserably. Bard locked it from the outside, went into the house and stirred the stew as Grethe had asked him to. He went to the locksmith's and arranged for the locks to be changed in the morning. Then he went to The Windfall to speak to the owner, Svart Olin.

"Olin," said Bard, keeping his voice down. "What must I pay you never to sell another drop to my Da?"

Olin regarded him in silence for a moment. "I've my living to earn," he said.

"I know that to be true," said Bard, "an' I've no wish to interfere with your living. I'm askin' you what I must pay."

Olin checked the bar, then jerked his head for Bard to accompany him into the storeroom.

"I have things that want bargin'," said Olin mildly. "My usual man can't always be relied upon, and he don't like the work overmuch."

"Your bargeman is Fat Ogan," said Bard. "He's reliable as any."

"Aye," said Olin, "I do much o' my business with Fat Ogan...but not all. I have things he won't touch."

"What things?" said Bard cautiously.

"Things," said Olin. "I've had trouble gettin' 'em through these last several months. You're reliable, and trusty."

"What makes you think I'm trusty?" said Bard.

Olin chuckled, a real belly-laugh, and clapped Bard on the shoulder. "You know what they say, 'bout how you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun your companion?"

"Aye."

"I can outrun you," said Olin. "The littlest babe in arms could outrun you. So I'm not worrit, even if you're less trusty than the wag-beards make out."

"That doesn't inspire much confidence, Olin," said Bard. "I won't fall on my sword for your...whatever it is you're doin'."

"No more would I ask you to," said Olin. "You know what's at stake if the Customs officers take to sniffin' around you. So just you take care not to let 'em sniff. I'll not sell to your Da anymore, and I'll make sure Zlada over at The Dormer don't neither. In fact, do this for me and I can see to it this town dries up for the likes of him, till he thinks he's livin' in a desert."

Bard hesitated. He did not like the idea of taking up this offer; smuggling would only paint him with a big red target for the customs men to shoot at.

On the other hand, he could not have Da drinking anymore. For Borin, drunk, was a danger to Grethe; and danger to Grethe was the one thing Bard _wouldn't_ tolerate from his father.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! I'm sorry I didn't respond to every review personally this week; I got sick and let things get away from me! I'll do better this week, promise! So tell me, dear readers, what do you think of these developments?_


	17. Chapter 17

Smuggling was not actually all that different from regular barging. He would declare a load as one thing when really it was another. But Olin made sure that whatever it was he was receiving looked on the outside like ordinary barrels of provisions. Bard took care to declare through Sorgen, and to file all his quarterly paperwork with Percy, and soon enough the paranoia that the customs officers would know him for a smuggler just by looking at him faded back into his normal, everyday paranoia regarding customs officers.

Grethe did not understand why Da had been booted from the house and the locks changed. For a while Bard put off confessing, but at last she gave him a very particular look and he found himself telling her everything. Not just about the altercation and the woodshed, but everything before that.

"He only fought when he was drunk," he explained. "When I was a wee thing, he didn't drink so much, and sometimes he'd dandle me on his knee and sing me songs, or teach me things. But he was so unhappy. I never knew him to smile."

"And he used to...to hit you?" Grethe seemed to have trouble getting the words out.

"Aye, he did." Bard pulled her down into his lap and played with her hair. "When he was drinking. Not every time, and I learned to know how to be gone just when he was in a mood—but he hasn't struck me in seven or eight years, now. But I should never have left him in the house with you. I never should have."

"What else could you do?" said Grethe, leaning against his chest and tucking her head under his chin. "And anyway, it's over now. He can't drink anymore, you said. But how is it you can afford to pay Olin to cut your Da off? For he'll not do a thing like that out of the kindness of his heart, I'm sure."

Bard let out a low laugh. "No, that he'll not do. I've taken on some barging contracts for him."

Grethe straightened up to look at him pointedly. "And why should not Fat Ogan handle all his contracts?" she asked.

"Ah, well, they're...mm."

"Bard, what did you promise him?"

"The risk to me is very small," he assured her. Grethe leapt to her feet and glared down at him.

"There's no such thing as a _small risk_, not to _you!_ Every risk is twice as great when you take it, and every consequence, too! Do not think to sit there peddling lies to _me_ about small risks!"

Bard stood, too. "I'm very careful," he said, "and Olin's careful, too. We just don't declare everything to the customs officers entirely...entirely truthfully."

"Has this been going on as long as your Da's been out of the house?"

"Aye, near two weeks now."

"Two _weeks_..." Grethe paced up and down before the fire. "Your own Da living in the woodshed, freezing his nethers off at night and I don't know what else...you turned to smuggling right under the customs officers' noses… What else should I know about? Any more secrets?"

"Grethe, I'll not let the risk of it fall on you," he said earnestly.

"_That's not what I'm worried about!_" she shouted, cheeks flaming, hair frizzed out around her face. "Twice now, the Master's almost killed you for doing _nothing wrong_, and you think the best course is to start _giving him reasons?_ Are you _addled?_"

"I'm more than able to do as what needs doing," he said heatedly. "D'you think I'm foolish enough to make plain what I'm up to? I'm not so lacky-brained as to get caught at it! I'm only sorry you know."

"You'll be sorrier still, if ever you think to hide a thing like this from me again," she said furiously.

"And be yelled at, for my trouble?"

"I'll do worse than yell," threatened Grethe, brandishing her tin ladle like a weapon. "You don't hide things from your wife, Bard. Not ever!"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you of it—I only wanted to avoid worryin' you!"

"This is _not the way to do it!_"

Bard grabbed her by the wrist and deftly plucked the ladle from her hand before she could whomp him over the head with it. She wrenched herself out of his grip and stood glaring up at him, flushed and panting. Bard could not understand why, in the middle of a fight, he suddenly wanted nothing more than to bend her over the kitchen table. He turned to the door before he could do something that would get him smacked.

"Where are you going?" said Grethe, outraged.

"Rainbarrel," grunted Bard.

"I don't know what you mean by that, nor do I much care to," she said, quickly insinuating herself between him and the door.

"Grethe…" he said, desperately, shifting a little, praying she'd not look down and notice the strain in his breeches.

"You'll not go anywhere till I say you may," she said in a low voice, and pressed herself up against him.

"What are you doing?" he said frantically, trying to back away. But Grethe had got one hand hooked into his breeches, and wouldn't let him go.

"What does it look like? I'm punishing you." She pressed down on his shoulders with both hands.

"You can't know much about punishment," said Bard, and sank to his knees before her. She yanked her skirts out of the way and Bard planted his face between her damp white thighs. She fell back against the door, her fingers tangling in his hair, eyes rolling back in her head, high-pitched whimpers dropping from her lips. When at last she cried out, convulsing around the two fingers he'd slipped inside her and nearly ripping his hair out by the roots, he thought maybe she did know something of punishment after all, for he was going to die if he waited much longer.

But she did not mean to kill him. "Stand up, Bard," she said. "You've more yet to do."

When he had stood, and dropped his breeches and slid inside her, pressing her up against the rough wooden door, she took his face in both hands and forced him to look at her.

"You'll not hide things from me," she said solemnly. "I'm your wife, and I love you. So you'll not keep secrets."

"I'll not keep secrets," he agreed. She smiled, and rocked her hips, and kissed his lips still slippery from her.

They finished together, and there were no secrets between them.

* * *

Bard's arrangement with Olin _was_ temporary. Not because he succeeded in finding an alternative solution to Da's drinking, but because one night the man was taken in seizure and died. Bard went to bring him extra charcoal for the little brazier that stayed in the woodshed, for the night was bitter cold, and found him still twitching on the floor, his mouth a-foam, unable to be roused.

Grethe blamed herself. "He must have froze half into ice," she fretted, covering the body laid out on the table with a blanket and smoothing the lank, vomit-streaked hair. "I should have put more food out for him, and heartier."

But Bard shook his head. "You gave him better than you kept for yourself," he said grimly. "'Twasn't cold killed him, or hunger, but drink. Or lack o' drink, I should say, and havin' it taken away so sudden. You didn't kill him, lass. I did."

* * *

Bard stood at the edge of the _Sindra_, lowering Da's wasted body into the deepest part of the lake. Percy helped him, while Sorgen held the barge steady. Grethe and Sally Ague sat at one end of the barge with Percy's wife Runild. Grethe had cleaned the body and prepared it for the funeral, and Sally had provided the shroud which wrapped him. A large stone from the shore, engraved with his name, had been fixed to his thin chest to press him down to the bottom of the lake. A few scattered boats surrounded the gravesite, but not many. Borin had not had many friends left, toward the end.

The Lake gave the townspeople life, and they gave it back when it was ended. All the burials for the town happened in the same spot. The Deep, they called it, an unexplained abyss far northwest of the town. There was very good fishing here, if anyone ever had the nerve to try it; but fish caught over the Deep were said to bring ill-fortune to anyone who ate them.

Turning the _Sindra_ about, Bard could make out the town as nothing more than a distant mold on the surface of the Long Lake. Percy offered to take over the oars, but Bard did not let him.

"Well, ye'll at least come to my house to toast yer Da," said Runild. "We'll crack a bottle o' the good stuff and have a proper talk. Lilja's got a nice hearty stew all simmerin' away for ye." Lillja was the eldest of Runild and Percy's surviving children who lived yet at home.

Soon the six of them were cosily ensconced in Percy and Runild's back room. They lived in a nicer part of town than did the others, although Sorgen and Sally could have moved away from the docks district if they'd so wished. Their house was warm and well-appointed, and they had a fine cellar of wine and mead.

One by one they toasted Borin. Percy recalled his good humor, Runild the herbs he'd always managed to find for her when she had a hard birth to attend. Sorgen made note of his memory for song and tale, Sally his charm and sweetness. Even Grethe managed to convey a nonspecific sadness at his passing.

They all were toasting a man Bard had never met. When it came time for the dead man's son to toast him, he said simply, "To Da."

Later, when the women had broken into their own group to talk, and Sorgen had gone outside to smoke a pipe without reeking up the house, Bard pulled his chair close to Percy's.

"Percy," he said in a low voice, "I wish to...to talk to you about what you said to me before. About Grethe." He looked over at the fireside, where she was deep in conversation with Runild.

Percy sighed heavily. "Ah, lad," he said, "I knew I oughtn't say anything, only I like the wee lass very well… You must know she never said a single word to me about it."

"Nor to me," said Bard. "But I'm glad you did. Drink makes men do strange things, things they wouldn't do else." He looked down at the cup of wine in his hands. With his Da dead and gone, he did not feel right saying more.

"I've never once seen you drink so much you changed your ways," said Percy, "for all I've known you since Runild pulled you forth from your mother's womb." He regarded Bard thoughtfully. "Ye never did leave that mark, did ye, lad?"

Bard did not move. "He'd not struck me in years," he said stiffly. "I'd made myself forget. I could forgive him striking me, knowing how sad he was always..."

"Aye, he was a sad one."

"If only he'd kept his head, and been kind to her, for she _tried_ to be kind to him. I cut him off, Perce. And in the the end...it was cuttin' him off that killed him," said Bard, squeezing his eyes closed. He felt the guilt of it would swallow him up forever.

"Lad, you cannot blame yourself—"

"It's not just that," he said, determined to confess all. "Had I the choice to make again—I'd do naught different." His eyes slid over again to Grethe, who was now accepting a packet of herbs from Runild. "And him my own Da, and my only blood. But it's true. I'd do nothing different."

Percy sat quietly for a while. "Well," he said at last, "that's not so very strange. It was your choice to cut him off, maybe, but it wasn't your choice that he should get to depend on drink, so much he'd not survive without it. That you did not choose."

"He told me, when first I started to row her around the Lake, that only ill would come of knowing her." Grethe, perhaps sensing his eyes on her, looked at him from across the room and smiled, the firelight glowing through her hair like a halo. Bard did not even realize the tension he'd held around his mouth and eyes until it relaxed under the warmth of that smile.

"Aye, well," said Percy contentedly, "he was one of my oldest friends, and I did love the sot, but I'll not say he weren't wrong sometimes."

* * *

_A/N: As always, thank you for reading and reviewing. Also, I probably should have mentioned this oh, seventeen chapters ago, but Grethe's name is pronounced "Gretta", in case it isn't obvious from the spelling. Which it might not be. _


	18. Chapter 18

Winter fell cold and hard on Laketown. Bard was kept busy chopping and ferrying firewood for the townsfolk, alongside his regular deliveries of Elven wine for the Master and meat when he could shoot it.

Despite Da's death, despite the harsh winter that froze too many hatchling fish for comfort, despite everything, Bard was happy. Almost indecently so. For he had Grethe, and so counted himself richer than a king.

When the ice finally broke and thawed on the surface of the Lake, all the townspeople rejoiced. There came a stretch of warm sunny days, and Bard's firewood was not needed. Soon he would begin transporting loads from the townspeople's gardens to their houses, and bringing in the shipments from Southern merchants which had been delayed by foul weather. But for about a week, his workload was light.

"The weather is fine," he said to Grethe early one morning, kissing her awake. A warm, damp breeze blew in through the window they had left open all night. "What do you say we take a little journey to the mainland?"

Grethe smiled and pulled him down beside her. "Yes, let's," she said, stroking her hand down the long curve of his back. "In a moment."

Somewhat more than a moment later, they loaded the ketch with food for the day, several woolen blankets, Bard's hunting knife, bow and arrows, and a few other odds and ends. Then Bard began to row them out onto the Lake.

When Bard turned the boat not toward the south, where he had his small hidden hunting landing, but toward the north, Grethe said, "Bard! Where are you taking us?"

He only smiled and said, "You'll see."

* * *

After a couple hours' steady rowing, the sun had risen into the sky and glittered off the surface of the Lake. Grethe lay back in the boat with the sun on her face, idly watching the steep walls of the Running Ravine slip past the boat on either side. She had never been so far north before: although the narrow gorge through which the Running discharged made the townspeople feel somewhat sheltered from the menace of the Lonely Mountain, no one went closer to it than the Deep if they could help it, preferring instead to fish and play and live in the southern half of the Lake. In her youth a common tactic for enforcing order among the young was to threaten them with forced journeys past the Ravine.

_Stay on the Lake and the dragon won't wake._

_Go through the Ravine and he'll wake up mean._

But now, even with all the meltwater swelling the river and making Bard work double just to keep the boat from turning back, she felt calm and unafraid. If Smaug was still alive, she reasoned, he'd be doing what any sensible person was doing just now, and enjoying the pleasant weather instead of frightening two unobtrusive travelers. It was hard even to believe in dragons on a day so fine.

Soon Bard brought the boat up beside a dock that had rotted and half-fallen into the river. He secured it to a boulder on the shore, helped Grethe out, and shouldered their supplies.

"Wherever are you taking me?" Grethe asked again, but again Bard only smiled mysteriously and led her into the thick woods on the eastern bank.

"This all used to be farmland," he said, lifting her over a bramble-filled ditch. "It's fertile earth, you know. Up closer to the Mountain, the ground is too polluted for anything to grow in, but here...we could feed all of Laketown twice over if we could clear but a portion of these trees."

"But even if it were clear, who would farm it?" said Grethe.

"Aye, who indeed."

After half an hour's leisurely hiking, they began to climb uphill. Up and up they went, to a place where the trees began to thin. Then Grethe gasped—ran forward—stopped short with a cry of delight.

"Bard!" she exclaimed. "What is this place?"

Bard took her hand and led her forward. "In the days of earliest Esgaroth, this was a watchtower, built to keep an eye on the north. When Dale was first built, they used it as a signal tower to communicate with the people of Esgaroth. And when Esgaroth dwindled, it went back to being a watch-tower—but to gaze south instead of north. By the time the refugees from Dale settled on the ruins of Esgaroth and began to build Laketown, the tower was nothing but a half-forgotten heap of stones jutting out of the earth. But it was once a mighty keep, and it has stood for many centuries."

Grethe was swept by a curious feeling of affection and kinship as she ran the flat of her hand over the stones. So little in Laketown was made of stone, for it was heavy which made it costly and dangerous. She had lived in wooden structures all her life; but these stones seemed almost living, warmed as they were by the sun. She fancied she could feel a pulsation of life emanating from them. But that might have been something else.

The keep itself was several stories high, wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, flecks of mica in the grey stone glinting through the dark ivy which crawled up two-thirds of the tower. There were arrow slits a little above the height of Grethe's head, and wider windows above that, their wooden shutters crumbling away to nothing.

"Come on," said Bard, "let's go in."

"Is it quite safe?" asked Grethe apprehensively. The tower looked solid enough from the outside, but she had a Laketowner's native distrust of the stability of any structure more than fifteen years old.

"Aye," said Bard, leading her inside. There was more light than Grethe expected. After a moment, she realized it was because the roof of the tower had long fallen away. The tower was open to the sky.

"There used to be six floors—see the landings for 'em?" Bard led the way up a spiral of stone stairs built against the walls. "When the roof came down, it must have brought the floors down with it. My Da used to come here to clear things out and haul back what was salvageable, and when I was very little he brought me, too. There used to be all sorts of things in the trash at the bottom, but he sold it all long since. Arrowheads and old nails, mostly."

Up the stairs they climbed, stopping at every window to look at the changing view. Finally they reached the top, where a little platform had been built around the outside of the keep. The height made Grethe giddy. The Long Lake glinted in the late-morning sun, far beyond the woods they'd hiked through to get here. Laketown was too far away to be seen even from this high up.

"There's a ruined foundation of another tower down that way," said Bard, pointing toward the eastern shore of the Lake. "When it was still standing, you'd be able to see it from here. And there's another you can just see the top of up along the Running, but I wouldn't go that close to the Mountain for a barrel of Thranduil's finest wine."

Grethe did not like looking toward the Mountain, which had an oppressive greyness to it even on this beautiful day, and so she kept to the southern side of the platform.

"What are those?" she asked suddenly, catching sight of some more modest ruins nestled among the trees.

"Storerooms," said Bard, "and quarters for the soldiers who manned this post. Would you like to see them?"

Grethe nodded eagerly, and followed Bard back down the stairs, her hand trailing along the ancient walls, the great yawning hole of the tower open to her right as they descended.

There were perhaps half a dozen outbuildings. Most were little more than tumbledown walls on broken foundations, but two of the better-constructed buildings stood yet: the officer's cottage and the armory.

"Weapons would have been stored in the Keep, mostly," said Bard as he showed Grethe around the armory, which had lost its roof but was otherwise intact. "But extras would have been stored here. Nothing an enemy could use against the fortified Keep, mind—just staves, and bows and arrows and things like that. I found all my arrowheads here, though I had to polish off the rust and lash them to new shafts, for the original ones had all rotted away. Here, see?" He kicked around in the debris on the floor, stooped and picked up a dull grey triangle of metal, which he presented to Grethe. "The place is littered with 'em."

The officer's cottage was even more wonderful. The roof was still on it, and nearly all the windows, and no wild animals had gotten in to eat the disintegrating wall-coverings and leave droppings on the floor.

The cottage was only one story high, with two rooms in front and two in back. Bard's Da or some other scavenger had in the past come through and removed anything that was made of metal or otherwise valuable; but the wooden furnishings were still there, dim tapestries mouldered quietly on the walls, moth-eaten rugs dampened the sound of their footsteps.

Bard saved the best for last.

"Here," he said, pushing open a sticking door into a back room. "For all that's been taken from the house and sold as salvage, no one ever thought to take the writings."

The room she stood in seemed to have been a small scriptorium, for there were several chairs and a long wooden table with crusty earthenware inkpots still on it. And on a shelf against the back wall were stacked sheaves of parchment covered in formal antique writing, and scrolls, and a few volumes bound in cloth or leather. Grethe ran her fingers over them and tilted her head to read their spines.

"Logs," she said. "And journals."

"Aye," said Bard, standing beside her and pulling one fragile book carefully from the shelf. "That's how I know about what happened here. The whole history of the Watch at Ravine is on this shelf, rotting away to nothing. There are a few other ones, too. A book of prayers to Lallyon's hidden at the back, here. And there's a couple of little ones with pictures in them. I think the last officer who lived here must have had a wife, and a bairn or two."

Grethe slipped the two picture books into her pocket and followed Bard back out into the sunshine.

They ate a simple lunch of bread and cheese and dried fruit on a blanket in the shade of a great yew tree. Then Bard lay down with his head in Grethe's lap, and closed his eyes to doze while she looked through one of the books she had taken from the cottage. The pictures were hand-drawn and rustic; the antiquated script in black walnut ink described the alphabet, the numerals, and how to spell simple words.

"'P-E-T spells pet'," she read. "Though the only pet our child's like to have is a dragonfly on a string, for we've room in the house for naught bigger than that."

"Mm," agreed Bard sleepily. Then, cracking one eye open, "Which child?"

"Our child," said Grethe, smiling down at him. "The one we're going to have."

Bard sat up in a hurry, his eyes darting down to Grethe's flat abdomen. "An'...an' when'll that be, then?" he asked.

"Five or six months, if Runild is to be believed," said Grethe. For a moment Bard did nothing but blink at her like an owl. Then an irrepressible grin blossomed on his face, and he looked down at her abdomen again, as if he didn't quite believe it held what she said it held.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" asked Grethe, laughing.

Bard shook his head slowly, his grin growing wider. He took her in his arms and kissed her lips and hair and throat, and then eased her down onto the blanket and lavished kisses upon her skirted belly. Then he slid her skirts up, and her shift, and pressed his lips to flesh.

"Five or six months—you're sure?" he asked once, gazing up the length of her body at her.

"Aye."

Then he bowed his head till his black hair brushed against her bare skin, and he whispered things to her womb too quiet for her to hear.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! How do we feel about this?_


	19. Chapter 19

Young Bettine was four months further gone than Grethe. So when Young Bettine's time came in May, Runild summoned Grethe to assist her at the birth.

"So's you won't be so terrified when it's your own turn," she said confidently, patting Grethe's cheek and relieving her of a stack of towels.

Grethe was not clear on how witnessing the birth of little Fraith was meant to allay her fears. It was a loud, busy, screaming, bloody, horrific process. For hours she supported Young Bettine on one side while Runild supported her on the other side, walking around and around the room. Then would come spasms that shook her whole body, and then more walking. Finally, Runild deemed it time for the baby to make its entrance, and got Young Bettine supported in a sort of crouch on a pile of linens, and told her when to push. And finally a slippery purple eel shot straight down into Runild's waiting hands and unfolded into a baby, and Bettine was helped to her bed, and it was over.

Grethe's main takeaway from this was that she would never be able to eat eel again.

By July, Grethe was seven months into the pregnancy, and so big around she had to insert panels into the seams of her clothes just so they'd fit. She waddled around the house doing her work, and every minute Bard was home he hovered over her worriedly.

"I hate for you to go up and down that ladder," he said one day.

"Well it's not as if it were a _proper_ ladder," pointed out Grethe. "It's really half-ladder, half-stairs. And I always hold the railing."

"Still, you oughtn't go up and down with no one in the house to catch you if you should slip."

"And who's to stay home all day, minding me?" demanded Grethe. "You?"

"I would if I could," he said. "I'll ask if Sally knows of anyone." And so it was done. Sally Ague sent along her granddaughter Elda, who was only a few years younger than Grethe but seemed younger still. And Bard could just manage to make himself go out on the waterways all day, though he always hurried home by the time the sun even thought of sinking.

They almost had a row over the little matter of the Flight Festival. Bard was of the opinion that Grethe should stay home and miss all the fun.

"I'm pregnant, not dead," she grumbled. "I'm so tired of the inside of this house I could vomit. I'm going to the Festival, and I'm going to stuff myself with sweet ice, and you're going to keep quiet about it."

"But what if something should happen there?" he said.

"Then Runild will be on hand," huffed Grethe. "All things considered I'd rather be where _she_ is, and she's going, so I'm going."

As soon as Bard saw the sense of this and acceded, Grethe lost all her annoyance.

"Now come here," she said, holding out her hand to Bard, who sank down on the bed beside her. "I've got perhaps five minutes before the baby wakes up and kicks my bladder in. What shall we do till then?"

Bard eased her skirts over the bulge of her belly, cupped his hand against the warm roundness of it, and kissed each shining pink scar left by her stretching skin. With his lips close to the swelling that held their child, he sang in a low voice,

_"Are you a tadpole, little one, little one?_

_Are you a tadpole, floating in the lake?_

_Have you a froggy-head, little one, little one,_

_and a green tail just like a snake?_

_._

_Are you a river trout, little one, little one?_

_Are you a river trout, swimming hard upstream?_

_Have you a fin and gills, little one, little one,_

_and scales that glimmer and gleam?_

_._

_Are you a winter hare, little one, little one?_

_Are you a winter hare, burrowed in your hole?_

_Have you two flopsy-ears, little one, little one,_

_and a velvety, warm, white stole?_

_._

_Are you a leaping deer, little one, little one?_

_Are you a leaping deer, wild and fleet?_

_Have you a dappled hide, little one, little one,_

_and four bitty cloven-hooved feet?_

_._

_Are you my own child, little one, little one?_

_Are you my own child, waiting to be born?_

_Are you a-dreaming yet, little one, little one?_

_Will I get to meet you in the morn?"_

* * *

Bard was hauling water at the Festival when he heard his name called.

"Lanwyn!" he exclaimed, turning to the green-clad man who had greeted him. He nodded to Lanwyn's men in turn. "And how has the winter treated you?"

"Not half so well as it's treated you," said Lanwyn with a bawdy laugh, looking over Bard's shoulder. Bard turned: there was Grethe walking toward them, one hand resting comfortably on the protuberance under her apron. "Mistress," said Lanwyn, bowing low, "may I say, motherhood suits you very well indeed."

Grethe laughed wryly. "Aye," she said, patting her belly familiarly, "all the more reason it should commence already. And how do you do, Lanwyn?"

"Well enough, Mistress. I was going to ask if your husband intended upon entering the shooting match again this year; for if he is, my men and I have agreed we will spare our pride, and sit it out." His men laughed good-naturedly.

"I'll not be entering," said Bard.

Lanwyn looked disappointed. "In truth," he said, "I had hoped to shoot against you, and have eagerly anticipated this day. Why shall I be denied that pleasure?"

"It is a story too dull for a festive day like this," Bard said. But Lanwyn was adamant. So Bard told him of the two months which had followed the previous year's Festival, and of how near they had come to the brink. Lanwyn looked thunderous.

"And no other bargemen were targeted?" he asked. "How did you bear the humiliation?"

"I can bear most things," said Bard, unoffended. Lanwyn looked abashed.

"But of course," he said. "It reflects not on you at all, and so the humiliation could not have been yours. Still, I am outraged on your behalf. And I am crestfallen that we should not have the opportunity to shoot together again. Can nothing be arranged?"

"There is a good-sized clearing not very far from here," offered Grethe. "The men sometimes practice there."

So out into the woods went Bard and Grethe and Lanwyn's men and, inexplicably, Lisette. The clearing was quickly found, the targets set up, and the men took their practice shots.

"What should the prize be?" asked Bard, hoping they would not say _money_.

But Lisette piped up: "A kiss from a pretty lady!"

"That seems hardly fair," laughed Bard, "for under those terms I am rewarded no matter who shoots best." And he raised Grethe's hand to his lips.

"Still," said Lanwyn, grinning, "it does give the rest of us something to play to, eh? Come on, then, men, let us show him how we've improved this year!"

Bard watched the Ithilien archers, who really had improved. They shot well at a distance, at moving targets, at targets close but obscured, and while running. Finally Lanwyn shot a target launched into the air right through the center, while Bard's arrow lodged in the first ring. The contest was called, and Bard most earnestly congratulated the victor.

"I will have to practice shooting at flying targets," he said. "If you will insist upon improving so dramatically in one year, what choice have I but to follow your example, insofar as I may?"

"This time next year," agreed Lanwyn, "I will be most eager to see your progress."

* * *

Bard was not on hand when his wife began laboring to bring their first child into the world. He was on the _Sindra_, bringing a load of reinforcing timber in from the logging camp on the mainland. He happened to catch sight of Runild's plump figure hurrying down the outer boardwalk in the direction of his neighborhood, and his heart nearly leapt out of his chest.

Bard brought the _Sindra_ rapidly to the dock and tied her up so sloppily she would have drifted away if Sorgen hadn't retied the knots for him a moment later. But by then Bard was gone, dashing down the walk to his home.

He heard the screams from six houses away, and ran faster, barreling through the front door and up the stairs.

"Grethe," he panted, going to her side and taking her hand. She smiled at him as if she hadn't been screaming like a fell beast thirty seconds before.

"Hello, dearest," she said brightly. "Oughtn't you be working?"

"This'll take a while," said Runild, laying out towels and herbs in the corner. "You can go back to your barge."

"Nonsense," said Bard. "I'll stay here."

"All right by me if it's all right by the mother," said Runild. "But the instant you make my work harder than nature intended, you're out, even if I have to kick you down the ladder myself. Understood?"

"Aye," said Bard. "How can I help?"

Runild set him to rubbing the base of Grethe's spine, during which moments she groaned ecstatically, and offering her his hand to squeeze when the pains came on, during which moments she just about broke every one of his fingers. This went on for a very long time, so long that the light began to fail and Runild made Bard set up candles and a brazier so she could see what she was doing. And still the baby did not come.

"Should it be taking so long?" he whispered to Runild, but she just clucked her tongue at him and shooed him away to fetch Grethe some water.

When the pains began to come fast and close, panic welled up in Bard's throat and bubbled out of him. She was in so much pain. She had been laboring for so long, and was tired. What if her strength should fail? What if the babe was kept inside too long? What if the pain should be too much? What if—

"Go," said Runild sternly, pointing to the door. "You're getting in my way pacing and you're muttering all the things that could go wrong under your breath. That's bad for the mother, and what's bad for the mother's bad for the baby. Begone, or I'll put a curse on you." And she physically pushed Bard from the room.

Now instead of pacing upstairs, Bard paced downstairs. Grethe's screams were almost continuous now, but they had changed in quality, become desperate and exhausted. Her voice grew hoarse and strained.

Bard went outside and stalked up and down the boardwalk before his house.

Four years. That was how long he had known her. Just four years. What if he should lose her now, after so short a time? Childbirth was dangerous. Bard knew it well; had not his own mother died bringing him into the world? How could he have put this danger on his own beloved Grethe? How could he have been so nearsighted, so damnably selfish?

Four years, just four. And yet already she was the foundation under his feet, strong and steady; if she should fall, so would he. He could not live without her.

He remembered her just thirteen years old, sitting on a stump in the logging camp. Waiting for him, as he'd been waiting for her, for all neither of them knew it.

He remembered her, fifteen, perched across from him in his ketch, one hand dangling lazily over the side to swirl the water into eddies. Her eyes had followed him around more and more when she thought he wasn't looking. But she was such a soft, pretty thing. He did not dare dream he could ever hold her between his own two hands, any more than he might hold a cloud.

He remembered her walking toward the gate of Mistress Grundel's property, every footstep heavy as lead, her eyes dull with grieving. Her family killed, her wealth lost, her independence destroyed, it was _him_ she turned to.

He thought of her voice accompanying his in song, so tuneless he could not help but laugh, so earnest he could not help but sigh. He thought of her lying beside him in the night, reaching up under his shirt so he jolted out of sleep, laughing quietly as she asked him to tell her what he'd been dreaming of. He thought of her on Laundry Day, her cheeks red with wind and effort, her shift clinging to her damply as she wrestled their sheets onto a pole to dry. She was so lovely, so loved.

And now he had done this to her.

A particularly loud scream rent the evening. One of Bard's neighbors, outside for a smoke, winced sympathetically and walked over to clap a hand on Bard's back.

"Always the worst, that first one," said Sten. "I remember I nearabout shit myself when Mikko was born. Valna _did_ shit herself, from what I hear. They often do. Yessir, from day one you'll have not a breath of clean air. Little bairns shit like ye'll never believe—"

A thin wail burst out of the upstairs window, an infant's wail. Bard shoved past Sten and bolted inside, up the ladder to the bedroom.

Grethe was lying back on the bed, propped up by pillows, her eyes closed. Bard knelt beside her and felt for a pulse; at the contact, her eyes drifted open.

"Just tired is all," she whispered. "Can I have her now, Runild?" Bard's heart stuttered and stalled.

_Her_.

He had a daughter.

A linen-wrapped bundle passed before his eyes and was nestled in Grethe's arms. Bard reached out one tentative finger to touch the babe's hair, plastered by damp to her tiny head. He touched her cheek, as soft and fragile as a flower petal. She responded to his touch by nudging her face toward it, her wee pink triangle of a mouth suckling at the air.

"Give her your teat afore she gets too hungry to nurse," advised Runild. Grethe hefted one swollen breast out of her shift and held the nipple, dark and elongated, against the infant's mouth. After several failed attempts, the babe latched on and began to suckle.

"Oh!" said Grethe in surprise.

"I doesn't hurt, does it?" asked Bard anxiously.

"Nay, love, it feels dear," she said, leaning into him and sighing. Bard held his arm close around her and gazed down on his daughter, wrinkled and red and sticky and ravenous.

"She's the most perfect thing I ever imagined," he whispered, cupping the wee head in the palm of his hand. "We made her. She's ours."

"All ours," agreed Grethe, her eyes sliding closed.

Mother and daughter drifted off into sleep still linked together by the baby's sucking mouth; but Bard stayed awake a long while yet, absorbed in loving them both.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading! What do you think?_


	20. Chapter 20

Sigrid— for so they named their firstborn— was an easy baby during the daytime, and a fractious one at night. In her first six months she slept only when the sun was out, and in the dark hours would lie awake babbling to herself (if she was feeling generous) or squalling (if she wasn't). Grethe and Bard took turns minding her when her nighttime fidgeting turned noisy. Grethe thought that, as the mother and the dispenser of milk, she was probably supposed to see to all Sigrid's nightly needs herself. The one time she mentioned this to Bard, he laughed, his bloodshot eyes crinkling around the edges.

"You're home with her all day," he said. "Am I to have no time with my own little one?"

"But you never sleep—"

"I can sleep at the pole," he said. "Barging's not such terrible fancy work I can't muddle through it with one eye closed."

And so when at night Grethe was half-wakened by Sigrid's fussing, she blearily pushed herself upright against the back wall behind their bed, and let Bard prop the baby in her arms and hold her there while the milk flowed into the wee mouth. When the baby had quieted, Bard would nestle her back into the little blanket-lined box she slept in, and go back to sleep himself.

Around the time she was starting to eat runny porridge in addition to mother's milk, Sigrid began finally to sleep through the night. When she was a full six months old, Bard and Grethe took her out on a particularly fine spring day, to the little sheltered space where he habitually made his hunting-camp. The sun grew radiantly hot at midday, and the parents stripped down to shirt or shift and took little Sigrid into the shallows. For about five minutes she fretted and complained; then she realized she could splash her Da and get him to laugh simply by beating her hands on the surface of the Lake; then she discovered that she loved being in water so much that she never wanted to leave.

By the time of her first Flight Festival, she was swimming like a little fish—though never more than arms' length from at least one adoring parent.

* * *

Lanwyn and his men had come for the whole two weeks preceding and following the Festival, as they always did; but now they invited Bard and Grethe to share their fire and their stew on the mainland for several nights.

"For," said Lanwyn, confidentially to Bard, "it is not enough that we should shoot together one day only. And I must ask—that is, there is a small favor I would wish of you."

Bard waited patiently.

"Since last year's Festival I have had the great honor and pleasure of receiving several letters from Lisette. And I have written her and it seems—well, it seems we have done things a little out of order."

"Out of order?" said Bard.

"Aye; for we've fallen in love before I've even met her family. We cannot bear that another year should pass before we are together again; but I cannot be released from my post by any means. I would marry her, and she has said that she would marry me, but...she has said that her mother has no great liking for archers, and thinks us all a deceitful lot. She has said that she will leave with me when I return to my post at the end of our sojourn here, as my wife. But I would not steal her away like a thief from the bosom of her family."

"Then you must go to her mother and ask for Lisette's hand."

"And so I shall," said Lanwyn. "The favor I ask is this: that you might introduce me to her, so that she will be less inclined to think ill of me."

Bard laughed long and loud. "And why, pray tell, should you think a recommendation from me will serve such a purpose?" he asked.

"Why, because you are a man of honor and integrity, the heir to Girion himself not only in blood but in repute. Your speech announces your worth, and your deeds bear it out. Lisette has written of how greatly she admires you, and your devotion to your family. Who better to recommend me?"

Bard wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. "Lisette cannot have told you much about the matter," he said, "if she has left you in any doubt of her mother's regard for me. Nay, my friend, I'm afraid I am the last person in the world who can hope to persuade Mistress Grundel to accept you."

"How can this be?" asked Lanwyn in surprise.

"When Grethe's family was killed," answered Bard gravely, "she was left in Mistress Grundel's care. For a week she lived under her roof, and during the whole of that week Mistress Grundel called upon all her arts of persuasion to induce Grethe to marry Grundel's brother, the very Master of Laketown."

Lanwyn began to laugh at this, until he saw that Bard did not jest.

"Grethe and I had not been betrothed save in the privacy of our two hearts. And so when after a week I came to Mistress Grundel's house and begged admittance, that I might make my suit for Grethe's hand, I was denied. Grethe saw me at the gate and came out without telling her hostess where she was going or what she intended to do. We married within the half hour, whereupon I was arrested for kidnapping. Before this time, Mistress Grundel had thought of me as a low sort, a knave, the mad son of the town drunk but essentially unable to harm her. But after I had, as she supposed, seduced a defenceless young girl and lured her away from safety and comfort, she believed me nothing less than a devil from the very depths of Angband."

"But that cannot be!" exclaimed Lanwyn. "Is Laketown so small that it has no conception of grander things? Is it so isolated that it has never met men of true worth, that it might recognize you as one of them? Why, you would be as natural roaming the halls of the Citadel of Minas Tirith as you are in these green woods."

"The people of Laketown have never seen or imagined your Citadel," said Bard. "I thank you for your good opinion, but know that it is not widely shared. If you wish to marry Lisette—and I most heartily wish you luck in that endeavor—you would be wisest to go to Mistress Grundel yourself, and present your suit as quickly as possible, without drawing her attention to the esteem we bear one another. Indeed I hope I have not already ruined your chances, by association. It would be best if you were not seen with me too much before you make your suit."

"Nonsense," scoffed Lanwyn. "You are my friend, and you have promised to shoot with me this very afternoon. I would rather lose Mistress Grundel's blessing than turn my back on the claims of courtesy and decency."

"I would not ask you to give up your love for my sake," said Bard.

"No more will I," laughed Lanwyn. "My Lisette is of an age. We _will_ be married. It is only that I would rather we were married with her mother's approval than without it."

After this, despite Bard's protestations, Lanwyn insisted on displaying his good opinion for Bard in every way, walking about the fairgrounds with him discussing the finer points of bowmanship, and playing with his little daughter, who squealed and flirted at all the attention. Lisette and Lanwyn even looked after Sigrid for an hour or two so that Bard and Grethe could join the dancing. Bard looked over at Mistress Grundel and noticed that she watched uneasily the picture Lanwyn and Lisette made, with the giggling Sigrid crawling back and forth between them bearing fistfuls of grass to drop in their laps.

So he was not so very surprised the morning after the Festival when he looked up from his barge to see Mistress Grundel storming down the pier toward him like a thundercloud.

"And how may I serve you today, Mistress Grundel?" he asked warily. She stood quivering with rage on the end of the dock, the end of his mooring rope trapped under her boot.

"At this very moment my daughter is refusing to eat or to leave her room."

"I am sorry to hear that," said Bard. "Have you tried offering her a bit of honey on a spoon? That always works on my Sigrid, when she fusses for no good reason."

"It is _your fault_," said Grundel sourly. "She thinks she wants to marry that dirty archer from Gondor."

"Well, what am I to do about it?" asked Bard, who very much wished Mistress Grundel would come to her point. He and Grethe were leaving Sigrid with Sally Ague for the night, and joining the Ithilien rangers on the mainland for a bit of song and storytelling—but not if Mistress Grundel wouldn't step off his mooring-rope so he could get on with his work.

"Lisette is a foolish child, and I am sorry I didn't curb her better when she was young! I should never have allowed her to mingle so freely with your wife—for now she's taken it into her to follow Grethe's unfortunate example!"

"I see," said Bard. "If you'll just take a step to the left, there—"

"That reeking Ranger had not said more than one sentence to me before I had him thrown from the house. I am convinced it was you who put him up to it."

"Did you not like his suit, then?" asked Bard.

"That knave! That ranging footsoldier! To marry _my_ daughter!" Mistress Grundel fumed. "The scoundrel will get not a cent of Lisette's dowry, I'll be sworn! And you can tell him _that_, from _me!_" She finally whirled around and stormed off. Bard looked at his loaded barge a moment, and then sighed and leapt up onto the dock to go after Mistress Grundel.

"I must ask," said Bard in a quiet voice, "what Lord Lanwyn, Captain of Archers at North Ithilien, who sits at table with the Steward of Gondor himself, would want with the dowry of a lass from Laketown?"

"..._Lord_ Lanwyn?" she repeated disbelievingly.

"Aye, Mistress, he is Lord of the fertile Carvain Valley in Anórien, through which flows the mighty Anduin. He has many men under his command both in the army and out of it. As an Ithilien Ranger he has won renown defending not just Gondor but all the region of Rhovanion from incursions from Mordor. You sleep safer in your bed because of him, Mistress. Do not be deceived by the rough travel clothes he wears when he ventures North. Lanwyn is a man of substance and character."

"And how do you know all this?" Mistress Grundel asked, her red face slowly draining of color.

"It is hardly a secret," said Bard. "The insignia on his sleeve denotes his rank, and he wears his family's crest over his heart. It really is too bad you threw him from your house before he could tell you all this himself, as I'm sure he meant to."

"Oh, dear," said Mistress Grundel, putting her hand to her brow.

"Do not be too unhappy," said Bard. "Lanwyn loves your daughter, and he does not leave Laketown for a week yet. He is no knave, nor yet a humble footsoldier, but a nobleman and a hero of Gondor. Your daughter could hardly do better, had she the choice of any man in Laketown."

Mistress Grundel turned and walked quickly out of the docks district, her rich velvet skirts swishing against the rough wooden boardwalk. Bard stood silently watching her go, his thoughts aswirl.

In the back of Bard's mind had always dwelt the dark, unalterable belief that however much his wife's love might overcome their stark differences in class, the differences would always remain. Did not people like Mistress Grundel and the Master enforce those differences at every turn, remind Bard of them with every word? Did not Grethe's cultured speech and education attest to them? Her kindness to him had always been strange, coming as it did from a maid of her status. He had always thought of her as anomalous to her class. Now, watching Mistress Grundel push haughtily through a crowd of sweating dockworkers, Bard realized that he had been mistaken. Grethe would never behave as the MIstress Grundels of the world, not because she took the trouble to thwart her own nature but because it was not _in_ her nature. She did not belong to Mistress Grundel's class at all, nor the Master's. She was as superior to them as Lúthien Tinúviel was to mortal women doomed to suffer and die.

Ignoring the _Sindra_ and his duties, Bard ran home and swept Grethe up without warning where she stood before the fire. She shrieked and squirmed, laughing in his arms.

"Whatever are you thinking of, Bard?" she asked, her long wooden spoon dripping something on the floor over Bard's shoulder. He kissed her face and her neck, enjoying the homey smell of her, so different from the expensive perfumed soaps she'd used when first he knew her.

"I'm only thinking," he said, "that with or without gowns of silk and a golden crown, you're a queen; and a lovelier queen never lived." His arm tightened around her and she melted against him. Bard began to sing:

_"Who is my love in the morning light?_

_A lass with curling hair,_

_with eyes so blue and bonny and bright,_

_and cheeks so pink and fair._

_._

_Who is my love when the noon sun shines?_

_A maiden pure and true,_

_whose glance is sweeter than pale moon wine,_

_whose kisses are sweeter than dew._

_._

_Who is my love in the afternoon?_

_A mother of oaken will,_

_yet soft enough a lay to croon,_

_our restless babe to still._

_._

_Who is my love in the eventide,_

_when at last we lay down together?_

_A lass, a maid, a mother, a bride:_

_my love, she shall live forever."_

Sigrid, unwilling to be left out of all the fun, discarded a wooden block she'd been gnawing and crawled over to tug on her Da's leg before he'd started the second verse.

"Long live Queen Grethe! Long live Princess Sigrid! Upsy-daisy, then, Sigi-my-love!" Bard cried, scooping up his daughter. Grethe pressed against him and laughed, her cheeks aflush with pleasure, for she did so love it when he sang her song. "If I am a queen," she said, "and Sigi is a princess, then that makes _you_ a king."

But Bard shook his head. "Nay, love, not a bit. Your servant is all I am, and all I ever wish to be."

* * *

Only a few months after Sigrid had been weaned at the age of two, Grethe's health came back on her.

"What do you think about that, Sigi?" asked Bard, tossing his daughter above his head till she screamed with glee. "Would you like a baby brother or sister?"

Sigrid, believing that she was being offered a choice between the two, replied, "Bwother!"

"We'll see, duckling," said Grethe, standing on tippy-toe to kiss her daughter on her way to add the onions to the stewpot. "Bard, will you wash her up for dinner? She's too wiggly for me tonight."

"Wiggle wiggle wiggle!" sang Sigrid, flopping around like a fish in Bard's arms as he bore her off to the wash-bucket where she splashed for a few minutes in the name of cleanliness. Then, having tired of that, she imperiously issued her favorite demand: "Da, sing!"

"And what shall I sing, lovey?" said Bard.

"Mmm, wainbow!" said Sigrid after a moment's thought.

So Bard sang,

_"Gray is the color of my little Sigi's gown,_

_and white is the color of my Sigi's wee pearls._

_Green is the grass where my Sigi lays down,_

_and brown is the color of my pretty Sigi's curls._

_._

_Yellow is the color of my Sigi's stuffed bear,_

_and black is the color of my swift Sigi's shoes._

_Red is the ribbon in my sweet Sigi's hair,_

_and pink is the color of my silly Sigi's nose._

_._

_Silver is the color of my sad Sigi's sighs,_

_and gold is the color of my laughing Sigi's squeal._

_Blue is the gleam in my happy Sigi's eyes,_

_and a rainbow's all the colors that my Sigi makes me feel!"_

"Again!" shrieked Sigrid.

"Oh, no you don't, it's time for dinner," said Grethe, knowing full well that Bard would sing to their daughter until his tongue fell off if she didn't intervene. But Bard and Sigrid both looked at her so pleadingly that she relented. "Oh, all right. Just one. Two at the most. Definitely no more than three."

* * *

When Grethe's time came to labor with their second child, Bard was sent away with Sigrid to Percy's house to wait. Sigrid ran around the house playing with Percy's four-year-old granddaughter Vira while Bard wore a hole in the sitting-room carpet with pacing.

But it was a quicker labor than Sigrid's had been. Only a few hours after her first pains came on, Runild's daughter Elda came to the house, grinning.

"You have a son, Master Bard, and your wife is the very picture of health," she said. "Leave Sigrid here if you like, and go meet your boy."

"No!" objected Sigrid, who hated to be left out of anything. "I come too, Da!"

"Of course you shall come too, lovey," he said, helping her into her coat and tying her boots for her. "Let's go meet your new brother, eh? But you must promise to be very quiet and gentle, for your Mama's very tired. Promise?"

"I promise, Da."

Sigrid was not overly impressed with her baby brother, but she made a great show of being gentle with her tired mother, so that was all right.

After he had tucked her into bed that night (and sung her several songs and told her three stories), just as he was turning to leave, Sigrid clutched her Da's fingers tight as she could.

"Do you love baby brother more than me, Da?" she asked, her small voice trembling a little. Bard sat back down on the side of her low pallet and gathered her into his lap, blankets and all. He kissed her brown curls. Over on the large four-post bed, the suckling of the new babe drifted through the drawn curtains.

"And how shall you ask such a thing?" said Bard, cuddling Sigrid close. "Are you not my very own sweet lass, then? Are you not my great strong girl, who can swim the length of the dock, and hold her breath for a whole minute together?"

"But what if the baby can hold his breath too?" she asked anxiously.

"You are my darling girl," whispered Bard, "and I love you as much as a flower loves the sun, and always shall."

"Promise, Da?"

"Aye, lass, I promise you, and I promise you again. And I promise you a third time, and you know a three-times promise can't be broken, not even by magic."

He tucked her in again and smoothed her hair, and sat with her till she'd drifted off to sleep.

* * *

The baby had joined his sister in dream by the time Bard rejoined Grethe in the big wooden bed.

"How is she?" asked Grethe, not even looking up from the fuzzy pink head still unconsciously latched on to her breast. She felt Bard's comfortable warm weight settle beside her on the bed and leaned into him.

"A bit anxious," said Bard, touching the baby's palm reverently. The tiny hand closed reflexively on his finger. "I'll bring her with me on the barge in the morning, so you can sleep in."

"If Bain'll let me," said Grethe. "He's a whole new little person, isn't he? He mightn't be a thing like her. He might even sleep during the night."

"Bain?" Bard repeated. "That's his name, is it?" They had waited to name Sigrid until they knew for sure she was a Sigrid. She'd been ten days old before they'd made it official.

But Grethe knew, looking at the fragile little human in her arms, that he was her son Bain and no one else. She nodded. "Do you mind?" she asked, looking up at Bard.

His eyes crinkled. "Bain," he said thoughtfully. "I can't be sure, just yet."

"Here," said Grethe, carefully dislodging her nipple from the little mouth and transferring her son to his father's arms. "Look at him and just tell me he isn't a Bain."

Bard rocked his dozing son gently. He fixed a bit of swaddling that had come loose, tucking the ends in expertly without jarring the weightless bundle in his arms. He brushed his finger lightly against one petal-smooth cheek.

"Bain," he said softly. "Aye, your Mama knows what she's about, lad, for you're a Bain and no mistake."

Grethe felt her breasts swell and grow heavy with milk, just looking at her two dear men. She leaned her head against Bard's shoulder.

"You've done a good day's work," said Bard, "and you've earned a bit of rest."

Grethe nodded and snuggled down in her covers. In only a few minutes, every soul in the house was fast asleep: mother, father, daughter, son.

* * *

_A/N: So here we are, chugging along nicely. There are only five chapters more before this story's end._


	21. Chapter 21

Having two small children in the house was, mathematically speaking, impossible; for they seemed to generate as much as four or five times the work of one. Bard took Sigrid with him on the _Sindra_ as often as he could, and Sally's granddaughter Elda came to the house to help Grethe while she healed from the birthing. But even so, the amount of effort that went into keeping both children fed and clean and happy was just staggering.

When Bain was about a year old, the work became even more staggering: for the Master that year passed a new tax on transportation which hit bargemen, ferrymen and couriers particularly hard. Larger operations such as Fat Ogan's could absorb the cost; but smaller ones, such as Bard's and Wulf's, floundered. Worse, the tax came just when a nasty cold was sweeping through the neighborhood. Grethe and the children both caught it, but recovered without taking real harm. But Bard could not stop working, not if he wanted to be able to afford the hearty, wholesome food his family needed to keep their strength up. He was run so ragged barging and tending them that by the time it was discovered he too had contracted the illness, it had morphed from a cold into full-blown pneumonia. And still he tried to get up and go to work.

"We've no savings," he rasped at his wife, who pushed him back down onto the bed for the sixth time in a row. "What'll we live on, if I don't fulfill my contracts?"

"You think I don't know we've no savings?" she said, exasperated. "I know our finances as well as you, Bard! We'll just have to muddle through, as we always have."

"Muddle through _how?_" he said, before a fit of coughing took away his breath.

"I'll petition for aid from the town," said Grethe, thoughtfully inspecting the foul-smelling muck that had been ejected from Bard's lungs. "In the meantime, you're to stay in bed, if I have to tie you down myself. Bain, leave your father be, love—Sigrid, will you please take him out of here? Da's not well."

"But Mama—"

"Go on, now, Sigrid, take him downstairs. Do as I say."

"Oh, do let them stay here with me," said Bard. "They've already had it, I can't get them sick again. After all your careful tending, do you want me to up and die of boredom?"

"It's not boredom I'm worried about!"

"Please, Mama, please may we stay?" begged Sigrid.

"Dadadada?" pleaded Bain.

"Oh for pity's sake," huffed Grethe. "Fine. I've got to go see Percy before the Records Hall closes. Mikko will be here in a few minutes to keep an eye on you. Sigrid, please keep your brother from falling down the stairs before Mikko gets here. And for the love of everything, Bard, _no singing_."

Not at all to Grethe's surprise, Bard was singing to Sigrid and Bain before she'd even shut the front door behind her.

* * *

The petition for aid was denied, on the basis that they weren't eligible for it because they hadn't yet paid the new tax on transportation.

"And how are we to pay that tax without aid?" demanded Grethe, brandishing the notice of denial. Percy took it carefully from her fingers and smoothed it on the desk between them.

"Well, Mistress," he said, "you can make two appeals more; but appeals have to be approved by the Master, and you know…"

"Yes, I see."

"I did try to push it through," he said in a low voice, leaning close to her. "It's criminal is what it is. This tax is hitting those hardest who can't afford to be hit, least of all now. Halden checked Bard's forms himself; I couldn't prevent him. It's a technicality, Mistress, and a cruel one; but there's little enough I can do about it. I'm only a clerk. I am sorry, Mistress." He paused, looking down at the paper between them. How could one thin sheet of parchment hold so much power over Grethe's life, and the lives of all her family? How would they get by?

"Go by the house," said Percy. "Runild has that little potion she made up for wee Bain's cough. Better ask her for something for Bard, too."

"We can't afford medicine, not now," she said helplessly. But Percy clucked his tongue at her.

"Something can be worked out," he said. "Something can _always_ be worked out."

That night, after the bairns were sound asleep, Grethe took a wet cloth to Bard's head and did her best to ease his fever.

"We won't last till you're on your feet," she said. Bard stirred and groaned, but his groan turned into coughing, and by the time the coughing fit had left him he was shaking and white. "Bard, I'll have to talk to Svart Olin. When you're well, you must go back to barging for him. I hate to say it, I do. But there's nothing else. He never was happy you quit, and now Wulf's business is sunk; he'll need someone quick. He'll pay you, and well, if I have a thing to say about it."

"How does that help us now?" he murmured weakly.

"I'll talk to Olin. I'll go to him tomorrow. I'll reason with him, make him see it's in his better interest to pay you in advance."

"But the risk…"

"We won't survive if we don't take it. I do hate the risk. But in this minute," she added grimly, "I hate the Master more."

Bard never knew what Grethe said to Svart Olin to get him to agree to an advance. Truth to tell, Bard barely remembered anything about the days of his fever. All he knew was that he was kept in bed for over a week; and when he finally was well enough to get up and move around, there was a fire on the hearth and food in the pot and the transportation tax had miraculously been paid.

"It was a very good advance," said Grethe.

And Bard was smuggling again.

Bard misliked the risk even more now than he had when it was just Grethe under his care, but Olin's contracts paid better than legitimate ones, and they were regular. Besides, when Bard had been at it for a year or two, Halden became Scribe to the Master, and Percy was promoted to customs master. This reduced the risk to Bard considerably.

"Been indoors hunched over my desk for years," he said over the congratulatory supper Grethe had made for him and Runild and Elda. "Too cushy and cozy, clerking was. Bad for the back, you know."

"To a well-deserved promotion," said Bard, raising a glass of the Dorwinion moon-wine Percy had brought along. He could tell from the smell that it was one of Olin's. Bard knew that smell extremely well by now—though this was the first time he was tasting it.

"To entrepreneurs everywhere," agreed Percy with a wink.

* * *

The work Bard did for Olin led to other jobs of a similar bent, all of which paid better than legitimate work. Now, for the first time in all their married life, they actually had savings. The foundations under the house were secure, the children were healthy, and they had money put away against future hardship. Grethe could hardly believe her good fortune.

When Sigrid was six and Bain was three, Grethe became pregnant again. She told Bard as soon as she was sure, but they agreed not to tell the children until it had gotten a little further along.

One night while Bard was hacking a brace of rabbits to bits on the kitchen table, Bain climbed up on his stool to make the usual demand: "Sing, Da!"

"Only if you get down from there," said Bard, the big knife paused at the top of its arc. "Do you want to lose a finger or three? What's the rule?"

"When Da's chopping meat, steer clear by six feet!" piped up Sigrid from her place beside Grethe.

"Just so," said Bard. "So just you scrooch over by your mother and we'll have a song."

"_My_ song," insisted Bain.

"Aye, son, _your_ song." In time to the steady, pounding thwacks of cleaver on wood, Bard began to sing,

_"How many fingers can Bain hold up_

_before they droop a-heavy?_

_Is it one or two or three or four?_

_Is it nine or ten or elevy?_

_._

_How many breaths can Bain hold in_

_before he sprasts a-wheezy?_

_Is it lots, or some, or none at all?_

_Is it hard, or is it easy?_

_._

_How many steps can Bain run quick,_

_before his feet a-fumble?_

_Is it as many as a rabbity race?_

_Is it as few as a stumble?_

_._

_How many tickles can Bain resist,_

_before he squeals a-piggly?_

_Is it all the tickles in all the world,_

_or just one to make him giggly?_

_._

_How many Bains have I, and not_

_a spidgen mean or meeksy?_

_Only one, and here he is_

_with a dimple in each cheeksy!"_

After this of course Bard had to sing Sigrid's song, and then he sang whatever else the children asked for. Grethe took over chopping rabbit, and tossed the chunks into the pot for stew. She saved out the hides and wrapped them carefully to sell at market the next day, and scrubbed down the table first with soap, then with distilled alcohol and river sand. And all the while she hummed along to Bard's and Sigi's and Bain's singing.

It was in that moment, laughing and bright-eyed with joy, that Grethe felt a sudden seizing pain in her lower belly. She gasped and reeled, hand clutched to her abdomen. The pain came again, stronger this time, so strong her knees gave out beneath her and she fell crashing to the floor.

"Grethe!" Bard broke off mid-song and dropped to his knees by Grethe's side.

"Get the children upstairs," she tried to say, but there was another pain, so sharp and shocking it swept away her words. He was growing fuzzy before her eyes. She felt a slight pressure under her bottom and saw Bard's hand lift away a moment later, shiny and red with blood. She saw his eyes grow wide with fear. Then all went dark, and she knew nothing at all.

* * *

Grethe dove in and out of dreams. The faces of her husband and children drifted through her consciousness, and she felt sucked inward and downward by a sweeping, sorrowful emptiness.

For two days, Grethe expected to die in that terrible black void.

On the third day, she woke, pale and weak but alive. She heard the muffled sound of the children singing with their Da. She smelled pungent herbs burning nearby. When she opened her eyes, she saw Runild's bulky familiar form bending over her.

"What happened?" she rasped. Runild held a cup of tea to her lips and she drank it obediently down. It tasted of foxtail and hazel. Despite the honey which had been added to sweeten it, Grethe shuddered at its bitterness.

"Runild, what happened?" she asked again.

"The babe took root outside the womb," said Runild. "It could not survive. I'm so sorry, sweet." Grethe knew the child had not survived—did not have to be told—but still the tears welled up at hearing it said aloud. "You are lucky to be alive. I've seen this carry off too many strong women. You will have to be careful, Grethe, for a little while."

"Careful—how? What do you mean?"

Runild sighed. "When this happens, sometimes it muddles you inside."

"Do you mean to say it'll happen again?" Grete asked fearfully.

"Maybe, maybe not," said Runild. "I'd say nay, for the muddlin' is likelier in women who've been barren before, and you never were. I think it very likely you'll be able to have another, only don't rush to it. I want you to wait till your flux has come steady and regular at least three times, afore you try again. An' if it doesn't steady itself in the next few moons, you come right to me, you hear?"

"Aye, I will." Grethe's hand hovered over the place where the pain had been strongest and closed her eyes. She hadn't been pregnant for very long—barely long enough even to notice. So why did she feel this great emptiness, now? Why did she feel that her own living, breathing child had been taken from her?

"The two you've got are hale and healthy," Runild reminded her gently. "And it's a very fair chance you'll be able to try again. You have only to be patient."

"Yes," said Grethe, fresh tears squeezing out between her tightly-closed eyelids. "Yes, if you say..."

"You should sleep again, sweet."

"Wait—will you send in Bard, please?"

"Aye, Mistress," said Runild. She went out, and a moment later Bard came in. He lay down beside her on the bed and cuddled her, and the tears came faster now, flowing out of her like blood from a wound.

"Sh-she says I can probably have another, and I'm glad of it, I _am_, but..." she said, twisting her hands miserably in her blankets. "I wanted th-_this_ one."

"Aye, darling. I did, too."

Grethe was so weary, and she knew she must sleep soon. But she was so afraid of the void that awaited her in dreams.

"Bard?"

"Yes?"

"Will you sing me to sleep?"

"Aye, love," said Bard, smoothing her hair away from her temples. "What shall I sing?"

"Will you do the one you used to sing to Sigrid and Bain—before they were born?"

Bard was silent for a long, long moment. Then he kissed her hair, and held her tight, and sang a lullaby to the child they would never know. And when it was ended, though his voice was nearly choked away, Bard sang one final verse.

_"Are you a wisp of cloud, little one, little one?_

_Are you a wisp of cloud, blowing on the wind?_

_Will you meet us, by-and-by,_

_when our own lives shall end?"_

* * *

The miscarriage had not muddled Grethe's insides too much, it seemed, for she was pregnant again less than half a year after. She and Bard waited in fearful agony for it to go wrong; but it did not, and when she was big enough to show Runild declared that it was rooted properly, and would not go the way of the last.

Still their terror was ever at hand—Bard's double that of his wife, perhaps, for she feared only that they might lose the babe, while he feared losing babe and mother both. But it grew rapidly in her, and swam about its cozy chamber as its elder siblings had done, and all was well with it.

Until it was not.

One day, when the pregnancy had advanced six months, Bard took a day on the mainland to hunt and dig for wild cooking-roots. When he returned, Percy met him on the dock, his face stricken with grief, Sigrid and Bain somber in his doorway. So much had Bard dreaded that this should happen, that he felt almost no surprise when Percy told him the babe Grethe carried had come too soon, and swallowed not one breath of air before it had died.

And Grethe—was she alive, or was she dead?

"I did not hear an answer to that," Percy said, his hand trembling on Bard's shoulder. "I'm sorry, lad, I am, and I'll help you as much as ever I can. I'll keep an eye on the little ones here. Go now, quick, and find out what there is to find out."

But there was precious little to be learned, after all. The babe had been perfectly-formed and unafflicted by any sickness or malnourishment. It—_he_—had simply been too small to live outside his mother.

Grethe was alive enough to beg, "_Don't put him in the lake, Bard!_" but no more than that. Bard did not put him in the lake, his nameless, tiny son. He wrapped him in a blanket of lamb's wool and rowed him north, between the walls of the crevasse through which the river emptied into the Lake. He carried him in his arms past the crumbled buildings of the Watch at Ravine, to the stand of yew trees where he had first learned of Sigrid's existence. It was very early in the spring yet, and the ground was frozen fast; Bard's hands were bleeding in half the time it took to dig the small grave. He wanted to sing to his son, that he might not be frightened to go down into the earth alone. Yet, though he knew the words for a hundred songs suited to a newborn babe's ears, when he tried to utter them the only sound that survived the passage through his lips was a harsh sobbing, guttural and violent.

Bard covered the grave over, and selected the prettiest and most interesting rocks he could find to weight it down and keep the animals away, and in his heart he said to the wee body in the grave,

"This one here's grubbite, ugly when dry but glowing and shiny when the rain touches it. A ring of red rust in a river-stone, and a lump of green peat-ole. And here—what luck!—the impression of an ancient leaf in a bit of shale. Look well on that leaf, lad, for its kind has not existed for many ages of men; this stone is all that remains of it, or ever shall. Here are some bits of mica in a chunk of samminy. I'll put it up by your head, so you can see it sparkle—if ever the sun should shine again."

* * *

_A/N: Celestial1 and I share the Bard/Grethe headcanon, and in fact she came up with most of it. If you want to be even more sad, go read her rendering of the loss of the nameless son in __A Small Pile Of Stones._


	22. Chapter 22

Grethe nearly did not recover; not because her body was harmed by the birth, but because her spirit was broken. It was only Sigrid and Bain that tied her soul to the world. Each kiss from their lips was a charm against evil, each encircling clasp of their dimpled arms a spell to ward off the darkness. She did not decide to live until she decided to live for _them_.

For her husband she felt only a strange, hollow indifference, which she could not even be moved to regret, for all she knew that he was grieving too, and that he put off or hid his own pain, that hers might be more readily exorcised. She let Bard hold her and stroke her hair, but whatever comfort she might once have gleaned from these actions was now as lost to her as her stillborn child. In a way, it was a relief when Bard left the house to go out on the Sindra.

In another, realer way, there was no relief. When the milk finally ceased flowing from her tightly bound breasts, she wept for a whole day but took no comfort from her tears.

Sigrid understood a little what had happened, but Bain did not. He had been told there would be a new baby brother or sister, yet none had appeared. Grethe's heart froze every time he asked her when the baby would be coming, until Sigrid or Bard quickly hushed or distracted him.

A month after it had happened, Grethe woke from her nightmares, dressed herself, and went downstairs. She hugged Sigrid and Bain good morning and took her seat at the table. Bard had made breakfast already. She could see by the smudge of porridge still clinging to his lips that he had sweetened the children's bowls in the customary way, with a kiss apiece. He wiped his mouth, spooned up a bowl for her, and placed it in her spot at the table.

She sat looking at her bowl, but did not move to eat it.

"Kiss Mama's too, Da!" lisped Bain, who very much liked to have things done just right, in the same way every time. Bard obligingly picked up Grethe's bowl and raised it halfway to his lips.

Then with a sudden spasm he dropped it, a howling sob ripping unexpectedly out of him, great silvery tears splashing down onto the wooden table

"Da!" cried the children, stumbling away from the table, distressed and frightened at seeing him cry. He had never before wept openly in their presence, even when Grethe did, and the sounds he made now were terrifyingly inhuman in both shape and volume. The wordless wails that poured helplessly from him cut straight to Grethe's heart, squeezed it till it hurt, and forced it painfully to beat again. She rose quickly, put her arms close about him, drew him to her breast and rocked him gently.

"There, love," she soothed, sinking with him to the floor, "there, we will be well again, we will be well…"

"What does Da do?" asked Bain of his sister.

"He's crying," explained Sigrid helpfully. "Like when you burned your hand on the grate."

"Have he burned his hand, then?" asked Bain.

"I don't _think_ so," said Sigrid doubtfully.

"Come here and give your Da a hug, ducklings," said Grethe. "He's too big for me to hold all by myself."

So Bain and Sigrid crept close again, and snuggled side-by-side in his lap, and patted his large brown hands with their small pink ones, until both their heads were wetted with the mingled tears of their parents.

Holding him in her arms, Grethe found what she had not found in all the hours he held her in his. Comforting him, she began finally to be comforted.

* * *

When the weather was warm, Grethe climbed into the boat with Bard to be rowed up the river to visit their son's grave. They left Sigrid and Bain with the neighbors; but at the last minute, Sigrid came flying down the dock to them and begged to be taken too. She stood with her lips pressed firmly together, and her hands clenches into fists in her apron, and they agreed: for she was old enough to grieve, too, and old enough to lay flowers on her own brother's grave.

Sigrid had never come this far north before, and looked about her with wide and curious eyes. When they got near the stand of yew trees, she ran ahead to the little pile of stones that marked the grave, fell to her knees beside it, and began to talk to it very fast, though her parents were too far away to hear what she said.

When they caught up they heard that she had begun to sing, her high clear soprano steady and unwavering. She sang to her nameless brother the same song she always helped her parents sing to Bain when the dark pressed in about him.

_Shall your lip tremble when I turn out the light?_

_Shall you blow into your hanky?_

_Shall you give in to a silly old fright,_

_and hide beneath your blanky?_

_._

_Shall you cry when the sun goes down?_

_Shall you quake till the darkness be lightened?_

_You might feel a wanting to put on a frown,_

_but then again you mightn't._

_._

_Aye, what's in the dark for a lad to fear?_

_What's there to cause an alarm?_

_For Mama, and Da, and Sigi are here,_

_And will keep you from coming to harm._

By the final stanza, parents and daughter sang together, and the singing brought relief.

Then Sigrid, her sisterly duties thus seen to, insisted on being taken up into the Keep so that she could look for the plume of smoke she was sure must be rising from Erebor. After that, she rummaged in the officer's cottage and took a yellow-glazed inkpot as a souvenir, and filled her pockets with walnuts to turn into ink later on. She helped her Da roast roots over a fire while Grethe sat in the shade of the yew tree, talking quietly with the grave. They ate lunch in the sun and rowed back to Laketown, singing all the way.

* * *

That summer, Lisette and Lanwyn returned to Laketown, their first time back since the hurried, festive wedding of a year before. Lisette, visibly pregnant, looked prettier than ever, her cheeks and figure round and plump. Both she and Lanwyn glowed with happiness and took conspicuous pleasure in their still-new marital familiarity. Grethe did not want to tell happy, expectant Lisette of the tragedies that had marked her previous year. But Lisette saw quickly that something was wrong and dragged Grethe off to a bench under the shadow of the treeline.

"I can see that you're going to try to put me off," said Lisette without preamble. "You might as well give up on that straightaway. You're the closest thing I've ever had to a sister and I intend to be one to you, whether you want me or not."

And suddenly Grethe found that she _did_ want to tell Lisette, not just about the miscarriage and the stillbirth, but about how hard it was to be happy for the sake of her children, how hard it was to plan for a future in which they had another brother or sister, and yet how painful it was to give up on that vision altogether.

"If I become pregnant again," she said tearfully, eyeing Lisette's rounded apron, "I'll just lose that one too, and I can't go through that again, I can't."

Lisette folded her friend up in her arms and stroked her hair. "And you've not been with Bard since it happened?" she asked.

"We've done some things, you know, only not the things that might put a child in me again. We've stopped short of that. I want to, but I'm so afraid, so afraid…"

"Oh, my poor thing," whispered Lisette, rocking Grethe gently. "My poor dear thing. It is so hard. I know it is. I don't know any better than you do how to live with the hurt."

Grethe pushed herself out of Lisette's arms and looked her friend in the eye. "Oh, Lizzie," she said sorrowfully, "do you mean…?"

Lisette nodded. "Three moons after the wedding," she said. Her hands went to her belly and covered it protectively. "I was still settling in. I'd missed my courses twice in a row. I told Lanwyn the first time I missed, and he was so happy. He wanted to tell all his men at once, he was so proud, but I knew...I knew sometimes it doesn't turn out, and I made him wait. And I...I'm glad I did." Her voice cracked on the last word.

"Lanwyn wanted to send me to Carvain right away," she said, recovering her composure. "He thought perhaps it was being so near the Morgul Vale that made me lose the last one. But Ithilien is a good place; there is virtue there under the trees. The woods are peaceful, and it is Lanwyn's men who keep it so. His term with the Rangers ends in seven months, anyway. I told him I would go to Carvain when he did, and not a moment sooner. This one will be born in the Realm of the Moon, which its father has made fast."

"Your child will have much to be proud of," said Grethe, thinking of the gracious lands over which Lanwyn had lordship, and the whole of Rhovanion which owed its freedom from attack to the Rangers of Ithilien.

"As do yours," said Lisette sincerely, and they talked of other things.

* * *

Through all the misty beauty of the autumn, Bard and Grethe did their work during the day, and played with their children in the evening, and then went to bed. They had a real bed now, with four pillars of oiled oak and curtains of thick wool to give them some privacy from Sigrid and Bain, who slept in cozy bedrolls on the floor of their bedroom. Sometimes Grethe turned to Bard in the darkness, and he gave her half of what she wanted, but not all, for he was as afraid as she was.

At Snowtide of that winter, the Master of Laketown married a young girl named Lettice from a good family which had fallen on hard times, and all the town joined in celebrating in the Fairgrounds. Hundreds of braziers were lit to warm the revelers. Clusters of vivid red hoarberries and green everleaf were hung about the clearing, and kettles of wine and cider mulled over low fires. A dais hung with green velvet was laid with gold plate for the Master and his mousey, nervous bride. There were steaming pies, buttered roots and joints of meat for all. A spiral-horned dirgal, shot by Bard and sold to Walburga for the feast, roasted on a fire in the central pit. The children gasped in wondering delight at the spectacle, and scurried off with Percy's youngest two to look at all the decorations and stuff themselves with marchpane.

"Be more impressed if it hadn't all come from taxes," muttered Bard. "I suppose he thinks no one'll notice the Snowtide feast is naught but a glorified wedding masque this year." Uneasily he calculated the likely cost to the townspeople, counting joints of meat and bottles of moon-wine in his head. What possible reason could there be for the dirgal's horns to have been leafed with silver, and expensive imported citrina fruits to be used for decoration, only to be thrown away on the morrow?

"Never mind that right now," said Grethe, pulling him into a dance. "Your anger will still be there in the morning. Let's enjoy tonight."

And so, to please her, he did. It was true that the Fairgrounds were quite transformed. Bard danced with Grethe until she ran out of breath. Then they tracked down their children (and ruined Bain's life by telling him he was not allowed to consume six slices of Snowtide cake in one evening) and sat together watching the festivities. The Master had hired a troupe of players from Rhûn, who reenacted his courtship of the unremarkable new mistress before thankfully moving on to more entertaining subjects.

Though Percy and Runild had offered to bring Bain and Sigrid home with them for the night so Grethe and Bard could stay late, they were not sorry to load their tired offspring into the ketch and row home. After singing to the children and tucking them into their sleeping rolls, Bard and Grethe sat in the downstairs room sharing one last cup of mead.

"Poor Lettice," remarked Grethe, apropos of nothing. Bard quirked his eyebrows at her. "I knew her a little," she explained. "We took dance lessons together for a few years. She was never very light on her feet, for all she's just a slip of a thing. Our dancing master would punish her for mistakes by refusing to let her have spice bread when we stopped for our tea. But it didn't work. Instead of learning to dance, she just taught herself not to want spice bread."

Bard looked at her thoughtfully in the low firelight. "Sometimes I forget you come from that world," he said. "Then you say something—just a little, small thing—and I remember."

"Does it bother you?" asked Grethe.

"Bother me?" He extended one leg to nudge her toe with his. "No, I'd not say bother. But it is strange. Like living with someone from a foreign land, and every now and then they break into another language you've never learned to speak, and you remember, _oh, aye, this one grew up across the sea_."

"I used to feel that about you," said Grethe. "But I feel it less and less, I suppose because your world is the same as mine, now."

"'Twas a vast improvement for me," he said, grinning.

"Aye," said Grethe. "And for me." At his snort of amused disbelief she added, "I do still miss my family, and it still hurts me to think of them gone. But I wonder sometimes, if I would have been quite brave enough to do what needed doing, if I'd not lost everything else. I think of the future I had before, a future with a large house and servants and books and parties and spice bread. A future without you, without Sigi and Bain, and our snug little house, and our songs, and our stories. And it breaks my heart even to think of."

"It is a good life," agreed Bard contentedly, leaning back against the wall, stretching his long legs. Impulsively Grethe rose from her stool and settled in his lap. His arms curled automatically around her and his chin rested on her neatly braided hair. His whole childhood had been cold and dark and lonesome, where hers had been filled with love and companionship. But one thing they held in common between them: their life together now, for all the hardship and the pain that it held, was the very one they both wanted.

So warm was he, warmed from the inside by love and contentment and mead, warmed from the outside by a glowing fire and Grethe's gently rounded weight, that he had no fear in him now. From the way that Grethe reached down to settle her hand comfortably between his legs, he knew that she felt the same. He kissed her lips and her throat while his fingers followed the familiar routine, unlacing her bodice and loosening the neck of her shift so he could palm her soft breasts. Meanwhile she was untying his breeches and deftly bunching her petticoats out of the way.

"Are you sure…?" he said once, and she kissed him in response and settled down onto him. It was not the exhilaration of exploring a virgin realm, but a long-awaited return to a home that delighted him all the more for its familiarity. Bard reflected on this notion as he scooped his hands down under her skirts to help her along while she shifted and rocked in his lap. Every time she had given birth, it had made some permanent mark on her body: long perpendicular scars running in pearly rivulets down her belly and thighs and breasts; the color and size of her nipples altered; her breasts larger, suppler, more pendulous. Her very shape, inside and out, had bloomed and unfolded. With every mark time and motherhood made on Grethe's body, she seemed to become more splendidly _herself_, pliant and inviting. Bard's hands roved greedily over every physical reminder of the family that their bodies, combined, had created, and he suddenly wondered how he had survived the last six months without this. Then Grethe's steady rhythmic rise-and-fall carried him beyond all possibility of rational thought.

Grethe now was moaning in such a way as to communicate the effectiveness of Bard's hands, slippery and sure beneath her skirts, and the approach of her release. She whispered breathlessly, "_Come away, Bard_," and he did, stifling his yell against her neck while she went first rigid and silent and then bonelessly heavy in his arms.

They did not move until Bard's rear went numb against the hard wooden stool. He shifted uncomfortably, and his movement made Grethe jerk slightly, which meant she had been drifting. Sleepily she climbed off of him, banked the fire while he cleaned their mead cup, and preceded him up to their bedroom. They both undressed silently in the dark so as not to wake the two slumbering children sprawled on their straw mats, and climbed into bed. Grethe settled herself in the curve of Bard's body, reached down to tuck him between her thighs once more, and they slept.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading, and as usual, I'm sorry to take so long! I am a terrible monster._


	23. Chapter 23

Grethe's fifth pregnancy was, by leaps and bounds, the easiest, bringing few of the aches and pains that Sigrid and Bain had caused their waddling mother. They had savings, and food enough for everyone, and Grethe had but to name a craving and it was satisfied. Yes, it was an easy pregnancy.

Its very ease made it terrifying.

All through the cold, wet spring, then the lush cool summer, Grethe knew deep down inside her that the only reason this pregnancy caused her no particular discomfort was that it was only biding, soon to end before its time. With Sigrid she had twitted Bard about his mother-henishness; with Bain, she had impatiently insisted on doing for herself. With this one ("_Don't think of names, now," _she admonished herself in her heart_, "nor think of it as a lad with curling brown hair, or a lass with apple-pink cheeks..._") Grethe and Bard were in perfect agreement: three months before the anticipated birth, a trundle bed was made down in the front room, to be slid under the table during the day and pulled out at night, thus sparing Grethe any need to use the ladder which now struck them both as treacherously steep. It was not big enough for Bard and Grethe both, so Bard slept on the floor beside his large wife. For the first night or two, Sigrid and Bain were amused at the novelty of sleeping up in their parents' bed alone, but soon Bain took to sliding down the ladder at night and crawling in next to his warm bulky mama. Sigrid, more independent by nature, enjoyed having the large four-poster to sleep in all by herself, but at eight years was not too old to enjoy waking before everyone else so she could cuddle in between Bain and Grethe before the day's work began. So steady was she about it, so regular her internal sense of timing, that her bare feet, stepping on his arm or stomach or face as she climbed over him toward her goal, were more reliable than the sun at waking Bard every morning.

By summer's end, Grethe joked that she might as well be a fine lady, for she did nothing but take her ease all day, stirring from her bed only to use the toilet. In truth she did much—whatever she could do without straining herself. Sewing and handwork to sell, of course, or standing at the table cutting meat for the pot. Anything more strenuous than this Sigrid did, and what Sigrid was too small or inexperienced to do, like shopping for the week's food, a neighbor did, or one of Runild's brood.

In early fall, Bard was hunting on the mainland, the last hunting trip he would make until after Grethe's quickening, for he'd rather waste good shooting weather than risk being away from home when the babe came. He shot a small stag which he knew Walburga would give him a good price for, and a brace of hares that would make a hearty stew for his family. Passing back through the woods toward the _Sindra_, he cut across an old lumber field. He had gone halfway before he realized it was the very clearing in which he had first laid eyes on a thirteen-year-old Grethe, swinging her silk-clad legs and waiting for him to make up his mind to do her bidding. On a whim he barely even noticed, he swerved in his long loping stride to go past the very stump where she had sat. The center of the stump had softened and decayed in the damp; rainwater and leaves from the trees nearby had collected in the hollow to form a scarlet soup. It gave Bard a sick, uneasy feeling in the pit of him, and he hurried away, an ugly fear rising in his gut like dragonfire. He rowed back to town with a growing sense of urgency: the bloody sludge in the hollow of the stump where Grethe had once sat had been an unmistakable sign, and he would not feel easy in his mind until he had checked on Grethe himself and sent for Runild. She would laugh at him, no doubt, for taking fright from nothing more than a bit of dead foliage in the woods; but he would take her laughter if it meant his Grethe was safe...

By the time he got home, his second daughter was suckling at her tired mother's breast.

Bard saw the pink bundle in Grethe's arms, sticky-new and still womb-shaped. He tried to form his lips around a question but soon gave it up as a bad job and stumbled like a drunken man over to Grethe's side. She dragged her eyes from the baby's face and looked at Bard. Her lashes were wet and her smile trembled, but a smile it was, a smile with a whole world of relief and fear and disbelief and miraculous, unspeakable joy behind it. Bard tried again to form words, but they choked him on the way out, vying as they were with both laughter and tears for utterance.

Runild, stirring a pot by the fire, said placidly, "Baby's healthy and hale, and mother as well. At this very moment I don't doubt Percy's giving Sigi and Bain more sweets than're good for them. And soup'll be ready in just a bit."

* * *

The little one they named Tilda. She could not let out the least squeak without one of her parents rushing to look for an ailment. Tilda got so much attention in that first month that poor Bain and Sigrid worried that their allotment of parental love had run out, never to be refilled. But as time passed and winter drew on, and Tilda continued to grow and thrive instead of vanishing like a dream, order reasserted itself in the little house. By the time Tilda was old enough to sit up and look around her with curious eyes, Grethe had lost the feeling that her littlest was forever about to go out like a light, and all that remained was the usual maternal sensation of exquisite terror and care.

With five now instead of four to manage in a house that was really only big enough for three, Grethe had little enough time for idle dreaming. But some nights, when she sat upright in bed giving Tilda her last little snack before bed, Grethe's mind wandered in imitation of her gaze, landing on her darlings one by one.

There on the straw mat, in the place closest to the wall, slumbered Bain. He would scoot toward his elder sister in his sleep (who just as unconsciously scooted away), and by sunrise she would be sprawled on the floor while he took up the space she had occupied at sunset. Bain was a thoughtful little lad, circumspect as only a five-year-old can be, but quieter than other boys his age and gentler. When a neighbor child teased him or struck him, he stood up as tall as he could and held his chin high; but later, out of sight, he would seek out Grethe's lap and tell her his small troubles. He rarely cried, but when he was sad or hurt or angry, his whole being grew still and silent, and he became like a little statue. In this regard he was his father's son, though in aspect he more nearly resembled his mother.

Sigrid, now, was different. Her limbs and hair and voice carried far. Tall she was and sturdy, her eyes like two dark cabochons of lapis in her golden face. She had a voice like a summerlark, and a knack for tunes which she had most definitely inherited from her father, along with her features and her height. But she was in manner and disposition more like Grethe: imperiously demanding at times, generous and sympathizing at others, ever sure of herself and her aims. Grethe predicted with secret pleasure the difficulty Sigrid would give her Da when she was twice her present age.

Around this time Tilda had usually fallen asleep at the nipple, and Grethe nestled her down in the crook of her arm to sleep the night through. Who would Tilda grow up to be? Would she be shy and sensitive, introspective and self-contained like her brother? Would she be exuberant and creative and determined like her sister? Or would she be neither, or both, or something else entirely? What combination of Bard and Grethe and nature and magic would Tilda someday embody?

And soon Grethe was drifting off to sleep herself, to dream of the revelation and adventure that would fill all her future years.

* * *

The summer that followed Tilda's birth was even cooler than the one before. The townspeople worried that the hatchlings in the Lake would not thrive, and all hoped for a mild winter and a warm spring.

But winter was so brutally cold that the ice on the Lake froze tight around the pilings under the very town itself. Aside from what Svart Olin tossed him, Bard's contracts dried up, for no one had any fish to ship out of town, and no one could afford to bring in supplies from outside Laketown.

Still, he did what he could. There were things to eat on the mainland, even in winter, if one knew where to look. He took Sigrid and Bain with him to sheltered places where forage fit for human eating grew under the snow, for though young they were adept in the woods, and could be trusted not to stray and lose themselves, or to eat anything they oughtn't. Then Bard hunted by himself for animals driven by hunger from their warm winter burrows. A couple of rangy squirrels or a basket of bitter green spargrass did little to enhance the thin porridge which was now the family's main fare, but it was more than most had. And Bard kept them in firewood, at least, so they were warm. Thus it was that the family made shrift, and survived where others did not.

And still they found heart for songs and laughter, through all that cold hungry year. Sigrid had only to smile a certain way, or Bain to tug impatiently on his Da's coat-sleeve, or Tilda to clap her plump hands and babble, for Bard to fit a song into the rhythm of whatever he was doing. Tilda's first and second words, in fact, were, "Sing, Da!" Whereupon he laughed in delight, for the first words of a pink-cheeked blue-eyed baby girl are to be celebrated in any event, and doubly so when they are shaped into so sophisticated an edict as _Sing, Da_. Obediently he hoisted her shrieking into the air and launched into her own special song:

_If my Tilda had flippers for hands, would she be_

_the very same Tilda that she is to me?_

_Or would she be a fish, swimming in the sea?_

_Would she still be Tilda, or wet Til-a-dee?_

_._

_If my Tilda had wings that allowed her to fly—_

_as long as she flapped them, they'd hold her up high—_

_would she be a bird? Would she live in the sky?_

_Would she still be Tilda, or far Til-a-die?_

_._

_If my Tilda were made not of flesh but of clay,_

_would she be a statue? And could she still play?_

_Or would she be stuck sitting, with nothing to say?_

_Would she still be Tilda, or hard Til-a-day?_

_._

_If my Tilda had roots in place of each toe,_

_would she be a flower, trying to grow?_

_Would she be a tree, oak or ash or willow?_

_Would she still be Tilda, or green Til-a-doe?_

_._

_If my Tilda were tinted a different hue,_

_and fitted out differently all through and through,_

_If she floated or flapped, if she sat or she grew,_

_She'd still be my Tilda, and I'd still love her true._

And then, as was unbreakable unimpeachable tradition, he sang also Sigrid's and Bain's and Grethe's songs, which had bloomed and sprouted extra verses over the years with input from their respective muses, until the singing of all the family's special songs could take up a whole evening if Bard did it right. And when he did it right, all in the house found themselves singing along whether they meant to or not, from Tilda's semi-verbal bleating up to Grethe's tuneless chant. Sigrid sometimes joked in her heartless nine-year-old way that her mother's singing would sour the milk of her own two breasts, but softened it by admitting that the quality of Mama's hugs and cuddles exceeded that of Da's, for where he was all bones and gristle, Mama was soft as a down bed. So _there_.

Through all the cold winter they sang, and if the children were thinner than their parents would have wished, still they laughed freely. Bard's voice was strong and cheerful; Grethe's hugs were soft, and her milk never soured.

* * *

_A/N: Thank you so much for continuing to read, and again, my most heartfelt apologies for the lag between chapters. Love you all!_


	24. Chapter 24

The warm spring the townspeople had looked to as their salvation arrived cool, wet, and late. When finally the ice cracked away from the pilings that held up the town, some of the pilings began to crack, too. Whole districts had to be evacuated. The Master declared a state of town-wide emergency and raised an immediate tax which, for once, affected all strata of society, though it did not affect all the same. Bard paid the tax out of the last of their savings, hoping doggedly that by some miracle the frigid winter would have done some good for the fish in the lake, or the animals on the mainland, or the soil in the gardens, or something.

For food now was scarcer even than before, and the money was gone. Bard got what he could for his family, and again they made out better than most in their class; though this was a small victory, as plenty in their class simply starved to death. A hollow, pinched look crept into the children's faces that broke Bard's heart to see. He never understood how Grethe managed to stretch the meager game he brought home, to keep them all from starvation. He did not understand how Grethe could make a single thin rabbit keep five bellies full. He did not understand, for she was careful in hiding the truth of it.

But when her milk dried up—and Tilda not yet two years old, younger than the age at which her siblings had taken their last suck—then, Bard understood.

Knowing, he ceased to eat at all, but gave his whole ration over to Grethe. But she would not take it.

"There is enough for four," she said, again and again, turning her head from the thin gruel he proffered. "Only four, Bard."

"Then four shall eat," said Bard firmly, trying again to feed his wife.

"If you go without," said Grethe, "you will not be able to hunt, and we will all be lost." Bard wanted badly to protest, but he knew that she was right; hunting hungry, his reflexes suffered. Shooting weak, his arrows went slower and less far. It was as hard for him, now, to bring in a few slow-moving raccoons as it had once been to pierce the heart of a dirgal in full flight.

"We will all eat a little less," he said. "You must at least eat today." Grete pursed her lips, smoothed Bard's hair from his brow, and then seemed to relent, for she opened her mouth obediently and let him feed her.

Soon Bard brought in a fat wild pig. In after years he would come to believe the pig had been cursed—or rather, killing and eating it had cursed him and all who had partaken of its flesh. For the pig was a female and carried a litter out of season, and Bard knew it when he took aim, and he knew it when he let his arrow fly, and he knew it beyond any possibility of doubt when he butchered her right there under the trees. Half a dozen unborn piglets tumbled from her belly onto the cleaving plank. After a moment's sickening indecision, Bard selected the two largest to be butchered along with their mother, the flesh peeled from their tiny bones and saved, the entrails thrown away. The four smallest he chopped up to sell as fishbait.

He did not tell Grethe or the children. He had always heard that it brought ill-luck to consume unborn meat or to kill an animal which acted against its season; and this prize had been both, pregnant at this time of year. He did not want to worry them. The flesh of this one animal filled their bellies properly for the first time since the early part of the winter. The children went to bed as contented as if their father had brought them gravy pies and bon bons, not knowing they'd eaten what it was a sin to eat, not knowing how they would be punished for their father's transgression.

For after that night, though the hunting only improved, and the townsfolks' gardens began to burst forth with promiscuous bounty, Grethe's cheeks grew ever thinner, and her rosy complexion grew waxy and wan, and her teeth rattled around in her gums and bled. The brutal winter had done the soil and the hatchlings good in some mysterious way, for now food exploded out of every woven net and every square inch of earth; but it had come too late for Grethe.

When Sally came to look at her, she turned away from her bedside with a face gray and drawn, and Bard knew in an instant what he had denied in his heart for months:

Grethe was dying.

"What can be done for her?" he asked Sally, his heart beating itself like a caged animal against his ribs. "What is wrong inside her, and how can it be mended?"

"Bard…" said Sally, her hand on his arm. He shook her off.

"What medicine is there for her?" he said, cutting her off, unwilling to hear the words spoken aloud though they echoed loud and ugly in his heart. "Whatever is needed, she shall have. I'll mortgage my soul for a cure."

"It en't one illness," said Sally gravely. "It's many, all twisted up together inside of her. Infection in her lungs, scurvy in her flesh, consumption in her guts to swaller up every bite of food she keeps down."

"Then why do you not give her medicine?" Bard pleaded, his voice low and breaking.

"I cannot," said Sally, and her own voice cracked. "The medicine I have for infection will only hasten the consumption. And for consumption of this kind—there is no remedy." She bowed her gray head, and tears slipped down her wrinkled cheeks. "I love the lass—you know how I love her, dear as my own kin. If there were a antidote to dyin' in all this land, in the whole o' Middle Earth, I would tromp off after it on my own two stumps, and give it t' her afore anybody, she's that dear. But there en't, leastaways none I ever heard of." What she did not say, perhaps out of kindness, was, _How did you let her get so sick in the first place?_ But it did not need to be said. Bard thought it constantly.

Through the last weeks of it, Bard had believed that Grethe would pull through, weak and scarred by her illness but alive. He did not try to believe it—told himself he did not believe it—but he knew that he had held to this belief, by the way he felt at the end. Sigrid and Bain had comprehended something of what was happening, though they did not grasp its permanence. Tilda, just toddling on her dimpled pink feet, was too young to question or guess at anything.

"She will not understand," Bard said through gritted teeth one night, looking down at Tilda who slept peacefully curled against her mother's side. A dark unholy fury clawed at him, rage at himself and at the Master and at the weather and the winter and yes, even at Grethe, for had it not been her choice to keep no portion for herself when Bard still had food to live? "She is too little. She will not understand." As if in answer came the soft customary rustle of Bain shifting closer to Sigrid in his sleep, Sigrid just as unconsciously shifting away. "None of them will understand." He bit his own lip till the blood came, to keep from shouting, to keep from screaming in pain and anger.

Grethe lay there, too weak even to cough. She drew a rattling breath and said only, "You will _make_ them understand." Laboriously she turned her head to gaze with a desperate longing at the two who slept on the floor. Stripped of her strength by the exertion, she did not move again, but only stared through yellow-rimmed eyes at the dreamers on the mat.

Bard found his feet moving automatically: he went to Sigrid and lifted her onto the bed without waking her, and then did the same for Bain. Last of all he hefted Tilda's warm pink weight into the crook of one arm and wrapped the other around Grethe, and sat with her, listening to her hoarse breaths which came slower and slower each time. After a while, he dozed.

Sigrid's flailing arm caught Bard in the stomach and woke him, though he'd not intended to drift at all. For one brief, sunlit moment he thought to chide her for climbing up in bed with her parents, such a big girl as she was now. Then he remembered that it was he who had put her there, and he remembered why. He looked down at the wasted form of his wife on the bed beside him.

Her eyes were half-open, and her body was cold.

* * *

_A/N: Hang in there darlings, one more chapter!_


	25. Chapter 25

Bard rowed himself alone to the yew stand at Ravine. In the cold and the wind, he scratched a grave into the surface of the earth, just beside the small mound of stones that was older than Tilda, younger than Bain. The wet warmth of spring made the soil crumbly-soft, but every dig of the spade shuddered up through Bard's arms as if the earth were frozen solid. It took him all day, and he rowed himself back to Laketown and his waiting children with a weakness on him that owed nothing to hunger or fatigue.

The next day, the sun did not shine, nor did a drop of soothing rain fall. The sky was gray as lead, an oppressive canopy over the procession that followed the _Sindra_ up to the mouth of the River Running.

None but Percy and Runild, Sorgen and Sally were brave enough to steer their boats up the Running. Runild held Tilda in her arms and cuddled her, and Sigrid and Bain sat mute beside her.

Grethe, shrouded in white linen and veiled with amaryllis, lay on a bed of woven pine boughs in the bottom of the _Sindra_.

Finally the three boats pulled up and tied. Bard and Percy carried the pine pallet between them, Bard at the head, to the little stand of yew trees. Grethe was laid gently in her grave—the amaryllis rearranged—the first spadefuls of dirt dropped onto her.

Runild, Percy, Sally and Sorgen began to sing a hymn. White-faced and trembling, Sigrid joined them.

Tilda, having squirmed out of Runild's arms, tugged Bard's coat until he stooped and picked her up.

"Sing, Da," she begged, white-faced and desperate. "Sing!"

Bard pressed his lips together and shook his head, the breath frantic and unsettled in his chest. He dared not open his mouth. Not even to sing.

Not even for her.

* * *

Every Spring, Bard visited the two lonely graves at Ravine. It was his most sacred ritual.

"I've taken to shooting again," he said in his first year. "Proper shooting. Goffried launches the targets and I smash them, every one. Do you remember when you asked me to show you, and I murdered a hay bale before your very eyes? Do you remember?"

Much later, he came to her again and said, "You'd be proud of me, love. I've slain a dragon, and it was with your name in my heart that I did it, your name and Sigi's and Bain's and Tilda's. He was the size of a mountain, and agile—the old tales don't tell of how agile a great lizard can be, darting hither and yon like a bat. Grethe, Grethe, how I wanted you after, to calm me and make me settle. I'm still not settled, and barely a winter now past. But the children are safe. Not children, even, for they've grown up more than I like to admit, more than any child ought in so short a time…"

When next Bard came to the lonely graves, his raiment was finer and cleaner than it'd ever been all the time he'd been alive. But the lines of his face were deeper, and he walked as if he dragged a heavy weight behind him.

"They want me for their King," he informed the mound which bloomed now with the vivid blue-black flowers of Widow's Veil. "I've headed up a sort of Council this last year, and the town's done well. They asked me last year, and I turned them away; but now the Steward of Gondor's sent an envoy, laden with gifts for the new King of Dale, and who do you think is the head of the envoy? None but Lanwyn, with Lisette and six bairns in tow. Lanwyn says he knew 'twas I shot the dragon, as soon as he heard it had been done; and he knew, furthermore, that if I survived I'd balk at being crowned, so he went to the Steward himself and convinced him to recognize me as king of a sovereign nation. What am I to say to him— to all of them? You, now, you'd have made a magnificent Queen, so wise you were always, wiser than me for all I was older. If I had you for my Queen I'd agree in a heartbeat, my love, for I know you'd steer me right. But how am I to do right without you? How am I to know right when I see it?"

His eyes downcast he thought silently, _Will you steer me right, my love, as you've always done?_

* * *

"Sigrid wants nothing of Queenship. She'd do it, as she's done her duty all along. But you know Sigrid: what she wants is to fly, not to be tied to a single place and a single way of doing. And now she's met a troubadour from the East. Jin, they call him, Jin of the Golden Throat. Lost his home and family to marauders as a boy; he's supported himself with his singing ever since, and journeyed as far southwest as Anorien. Lanwyn liked him so much he offered him a home at Carvain, but Jin refused."

Bard paused and, kneeling, pulled an errant weed from between the velvety blossoms of Widow's Veil. He thought of Jin, with his golden skin and hair as blue-black as a raven's wing, which he wore in a single braid down his back in the Easterling style. He thought of the way Jin held himself steady and straight in spite of his slight build. He thought of the slanted, earnest black eyes which announced intelligence but not arrogance; and of the way those eyes shone when they lit upon the tall, fiercely beautiful Sigrid. She might have married a lord, or a general, or a prince. At the very least, she might have chosen someone with more to his name than the clothes on his back and the song on his lips. Bard sighed.

"Aye," he said with a mixture of sorrow and pride, "she's your daughter, and no mistake. And Bain'll make a fine King."

* * *

"You're a grandmother, love," he announced jubilantly one Spring. "Silve's been delivered of a healthy lad: Brand, the future King of Dale. You should only see the way Bain goes about, a daze on his eyes like he's been struck upside the head, and smiling all the time. Brand's so wee; I'd almost forgot how wee they are, but as soon as I held him and looked on him, it all came back to me as if it was only last week that you were nursing Sigi for the first time. Speaking of, Sigi and Jin will be coming back in the summer, in time for the Flight Festival. It's hard, having her gone so much; but it could be worse. You remember that hatchling she cared for on Ravenhill, the one she fed and nursed when it fell from its nest? It travels with her now and sits on her shoulder, and sometimes flies back with a message or two. And she sends along the pictures she's painted, of far-off places the likes of which you and I can only imagine. They're far East now, travelling through Jin's home country. 'Tis a strange and mysterious place, if Sigi's paintings are to be believed. Oliphaunts are the least of it. Your daughter's a world traveler, my love, and your son shall be a King."

* * *

When clever, imperious Tilda was married to the crown prince of Dorwinion, Grethe was told. When children were born to Tilda, Bain and (finally) Sigrid, Grethe was informed of Bard's joy— and, sometimes, of his fathomless sorrow, at the stillbirths and the early deaths. Grethe learned of his pride in Bain's wisdom and discretion; of his delight in the radiant wit and humor of Tilda; of his deep pleasure in Sigrid's strange and mysterious journeyings and the talent with which she captured them on paper and in song.

There was more, now, to give joy than sorrow. And when Bard, gray-haired and weathered, dandled his multiplying progeny on his knee and sang them nonsense songs which he made up specially for them, he was filled with happiness. But a root of sorrow had taken hold in his heart long ago, never to be cut out. Perhaps it was that very root which gave such poignancy to his present joy.

* * *

One Spring Bard was late in coming. The snowdrops had died away and the roses were climbing over everything before he arrived. But this time, as never before, he did not come alone. Accompanying him were Sigrid and Bain and Tilda, and their own spouses and children and grandchildren.

Bain wore a crown of sapphires and gold.

Bard wore a shroud of silk.

Hymns were sung, ancient and grand, till the sun-dappled glade echoed with them. The first King of Dale was laid to rest beneath the yew trees, beside two humble mounds of river stones. No grand monument would the King suffer to be built here, no carven headstone announced the burial site. But over the first King's grave-mound his children, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren each placed a stone; and the pile of stones, by the end, was not small. In time, the small flowers of Widow's Veil which blanketed the other two graves would spread to cover Bard's.

When nearly all the mourners had gone, one last hymn was sung. It was neither grand nor ancient, and only three there knew it, for all they had not heard it in many years. It was a song their father had stopped singing a lifetime ago, but the thought of it came back now as childhood memories sometimes do to the old, and the singers did not falter, even to the last verse:

_Who is my love in the eventide,_

_when at last we lay down together?_

_A lass, a maid, a mother, a bride;_

_our love, it shall live forever._

* * *

_A/N: Thanks so much for seeing this through to the end, and as always, extra thanks to celestial1 for the headcanon, endless beta-ing and just generally being a cool cat who is good at words. Love you all!_


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